A basic toaster is good for just that: toasting bread-type items, including bagels. If you’re looking for something more versatile, you should opt for a toaster oven, which will have settings for baking, broiling, etc. Even better, get a convection toaster oven which will also do those things, but much faster. If you have the coin, I’d opt for a Breville. Not only are they well rated, but their customer service is unbeatable.
I like the versatility of a toaster oven. Just a few things I use it for where a regular toaster wouldn’t do:
–melt cheese on English Muffins when I’m making breakfast sandwiches
–warm up food that would get weird in the microwave
–bake small batches of things when I don’t want to heat up the full size oven in the summer
–store loaf of bread when not in use (cat will rip into it otherwise)
Not a bad idea. I have a Toastmaster single waffle iron that is easily 35 years old and makes perfect waffles. I don’t think that company even exists in its own right any longer. Probably absorbed by some larger conglomerate.
Yes. Convection toaster oven. Much more useful than a slot toaster. Heats up to temp in just a couple of minutes, and cuts cooking time by about 25%. I’ve got a Oster; I paid about $80 for it on amazon. We’ve been happy with it.
Very nice looking but three hundred bucks? Upthread someone recommended Breville toasters, and those are also high-end machines but I don’t think even they are that expensive.
I’ve had toasters last me years and years. Even the cheap ones.
FWIW, my biggest issue with toasters is a lot don’t have a large enough flat piece of metal on the bottom, so pop tarts will fall deep into the toaster.
True, but if you put a frozen bagel in it, three minutes later it’ll beep gently and a perfectly toasted bagel will slowly emerge gracefully from it, like Venus from the waves. You can’t put a price on that.
As a kid, in old movies and TV shows, I would see from time to time someone using a toaster that literally launched the toast into the air, to be caught by the character making breakfast. I was disappointed to find that really doesn’t happen, no matter which toaster you buy.
I like my Breville long-slot “Lift and Look” toaster. It’s about $80. I wasn’t going to buy a toaster, I was getting along fine without one (also no microwave). My MIL insisted on buying us one. The toasting isn’t quite as even as I’d like, but otherwise is great. It can handle larger sizes of bread, the “bagel” setting is good for hamburger buns.
I’m happy with all my Breville stuff, I also have an automatic tea maker and a single serve blender.
Toaster ovens are terrific if you’re cooking for one. Scale down nearly any food you’d bake or roast in a regular oven.
I often did a singlr bone-in skin-on chicken breast, with some sliced potatoes and onion, in a shallow pan in the toaster oven. All that roasted goodness, without heating up the whole damn kitchen.
(… and count me as another one secretly disappointed that there’s no “fly thru the air!” toaster. Though I guess that’d be a right pain in the ass, in real life.)
The Classic Dualit is pretty bullet proof. Not cheap but it’ll probably be the only one you’ll ever need. It is a bit like Samuel Vimes’s theory on cheap boots. I’ve probably spent £200 on adequate toasters over my married life but if I’d spent that much on a Dualit first thing it would have easily lasted the whole period and I’ve have had really great toast throughout. I did use that approach with our Magimix food processor and I’ve had 25+ years of heavy-duty usage without a blip. Sometimes it is worth spending a bit more.
We bought a new toaster in the past year or 2 when our old one crapped out. Given our age/$, we could buy whatever toaster we wanted. And we tend to like nice, dependable things. My wife checked out (seemingly) a million different ones, including some awfully pricey (IMO) ones. I think she tried really hard to convince herself to buy either the SMEG or Duolit, but just couldn’t convince herself to pay that much for something that we used not terribly frequently to brown toast or English muffins.
Not sure what brand she ended up buying. It is white, and has one long - and wide - slot. I think a selling point was that it is relatively narrow front-to-back, so it can be pushed back under the upper cabinets, and does not take up much counter space when not in use. Yeah, it succeeds in making the bread hot and brown - which is all I wanted. And apparently my wife is satisfied w/ how it looks on the counter.
Don’t get me started on the search for a new coffee-maker! Oughtn’t these things last FOREVER?!