If you uses laser cutter to toast your bread, you can get all kinds of fun patterns.
Instead using of one cycle with the knob on maximum & guessing the second cycle, have you tried an intermediate setting such that two cycles end up with the correct amount of breadly doneness destruction?
Once you home in on that magic setting, I bet a Sharpie or similar marker can give you a more-or-less permanent reminder for the correct knob setting.
Might not work great, but it’s less messy than hara-kiri 
As to everyone else …
Wow I had no idea folks had so many variables vs tight tolerances on their preferences.
I eat most of my toast in restaurants in strange cities I won’t go back to again for months or years, so I get used to “eh, close enough” is all the accurate toastedness ever gets. It certainly helps that my idea of ideal toastedness is sourdough or rye (or in a pinch WW) that’s warm through & slightly crispy on the surface with very little color. @Tibby’s ideas make me queasy; but to each their own.
Given the gravity of the topic and the extent to which consuming proper toast can have a transformative effect on our otherwise mundane lives, may I present to you all the toast rack?
It’s an essential tool for keeping toast crispy in humid climates like where I live. If you just put the toasted bread onto the plate, moisture immediately builds up in the space between the surfaces of the toast and the dish, resulting in sogginess. This is unacceptable, but the rack solves the problem nicely.
Toast!!! is life. Anytime, anyplace. Great pickme up after cold outside activites. Get some calories in the body.
One solution I enjoy for cold or overdone toast is to butter and jam it up and then microwave it for 20 seconds. Poor mans pastry.
The real question about toasters is what to do when they break or the power goes out? Because…Toast is Life!!
You can toast bread on a gas range or in the fireplace.
Wiinner!! I have done some little solar boxes as well. Not quite the same, but melts the butter.
Toasters seem to be pretty durable, by the time a filament or other part fails, they are pretty beat up…
Ive never tried to repair one, but I understand borax is used to solder filaments together. Seems tricky.
That sounds like I’d have to be proficient in number theory and dynamic systems. I’m too tired for math before being caffeinated in the morning.
Oh, I love sourdough and rye. But, you gotta try it toasted black. [Martha Stewart] It’s good thing! [/Martha Stewart]
your preference just makes me sad. Why even bother? To me, the whole point is that the browning makes it taste better.
also makes me sad. I try to let my toast cool enough that it won’t melt the butter, because solid butter spread thin is such a fabulous sensation, and melted butter just doesn’t have the same impact. It’s like the difference between salt on the outside of a pretzel or chip, and just having a very salty bread-like object.
That’s pretty close to my toast preference although I like bakery white bread the best. I want it just lightly tan in color. I don’t like crunchy, hard toast.
And yes, toast is a staple. I will eat it for any meal and snacks. A hot cup of cocoa and toast with cinnamon sugar is a great snack. It doesn’t even have to be cold outside. I just had it out on my deck and the temp was in the 80s!
While you’re waiting for the next post, here is a song about toast.
Hey, I recognize that pink page! It’s from the Peanuts Cookbook - it was a little square paperback book with a green cover.
I dunno whatever happened to my copy, but I remember it had a recipe for lemon squares (pat-in crust of flour, powdered sugar, and butter, topped with a mixture of egg, sugar and lemon juice and baked). It was a particularly sweet version - I switched to a recipe that had more lemon juice and less sugar in the topping. But I still remember that little book!