Why can't toasters work better?

[bob_2]

There is only one way to make perfect toast

[brickbacon]

Get this:

Cookware, Cooking Utensils, Kitchen Decor & Gourmet Foods | Williams Sonoma

Works every time.

[StarvingButStrong]

@Francis_Vaughan

There is a clue here. Doing so is actually cheap - cheap once you have paid for a microcontroller to drive the toaster. But note that they don’t try to detect the colour of the toast. My suspicion is that a toaster is a very unfriendly environment to place such sensors and expect them to last any useful time. Not at a cost that your average consumer is willing to pay.

I think you’re on to something here! What we actually need is two parts, but neither is very challenging and shouldn’t be all that expensive.

First a toaster that you could set to a specific number of seconds, like any old microwave. Clearly they have already mastered that kind of timer, so it shouldn’t really increase the cost of the toaster significantly.

Second you need the computer part to run a little program. The program will take some experimenting so as to determine the effect of the variables, but I doubt it would be all that challenging to create. Surely it could run on any smart phone or tablet or other device you happen to have on hand. Maybe give a new life to something you’ve otherwise abandoned.

The process is simple: it asks for some input from you and then it tells you how many seconds to set your toaster timer to. And zingo! Perfect toast every single time!

Of course, you’d also need some subsidiary tools to accurately answer the questions. Like a scale, a micrometer, and an instant-read thermometer, but who doesn’t already have those lying around the kitchen?

So the process goes something like this:

1. You get the urge for toast. You look at the options on hand for bread, and pick one.

2. Switch on your little computer and double click the “Toastr Wizard” app.

(for the following, the screen prompts are in All CAPS)
3) SELECT WHO WILL BE EATING THE TOAST

See, you have previously created profiles for every member of the household (plus a generic ‘Guest’) with your basic preferences, with choices from 1 to 10 for degree of toastedness for every major type of bread. I mean, who doesn’t like their pumpernickel toast much crunchier than their white sandwich bread?

4. I click on StarvingButStrong.

5. SELECT WHAT TYPE OF BREAD YOU ARE TOASTING

6. I click on Light Rye.

7. ARE YOU TOASTING ONE OR TWO SLICES OF BREAD?

8. I enter 1.

9. WHAT IS THE THICKNESS OF BREAD SLICE 1 IN MILLIMETERS?

10. I whip out the micrometer, twiddle the screw for a few seconds, then I enter 2.6

11. WHAT IS THE WEIGHT OF BREAD SLICE 1 IN GRAMS?

12. Punch on the digital scale, wait until it zeros out, set the bread on it. Enter 18.

13)WHAT IS THE FRESHNESS LEVEL OF THE BREAD, WHERE 1 = JUST BAKED/VERY MOIST AND 10 = STALE/DRIED OUT?

14. Sadly I enter 8. (I really should have gone shopping yesterday.)

15. WHAT IS THE TEMPERATURE INSIDE THE SLOT OF THE TOASTER?

16. I open the thermometer and stick the probe into the slot. The toaster hasn’t run yet, but the house is still warming up from overnight. I enter 68. (I set the program to default to Fahrenheit long ago.)

17. WHAT IS THE TEMPERATURE OF THE SLICE OF BREAD?

18. I stab the probe into the bread. Since the loaf was sitting on the counter in a bread box it’s basically room temperature, but lagging a little in warming up from the overnight low. I enter 66.

19. YOUR TOAST WILL REQUIRE 137 SECONDS.

20. I put the bread into the toaster. I set the timer on the toaster to 137 and push start.

21. 137 seconds later I heard the bread pop up. No, I hear the PERFECT slice of toast pop up.

NIRVANA.

Okay, the procedure took so long I’ll have to eat it on the run out the door or be late for work, but PERFECTION is worth sacrifices, right?

[Francis_Vaughan]

Awesome. Kickstarter? I’m in for $0.02 straight up.

[TwoCarrotSnowman]

I have a problem with step 8.

What’s this “just one slice” concept all about? I don’t understand :D.

[CannyDan]

Once upon a time long, long ago, some relative had a toaster that contained a traveling metal belt. You fed a slice of bread into one side of the toaster, upright but edge first. It would ride along on the conveyor belt, past the heat coils, and emerge out the other side. As I recall, you could change the darkness by varying the speed of the conveyor. It seemed to work really well, producing consistent toast. And it was fast. I guess that meant it had lots of heat coils.

I cannot find anything like it today. All I’ve been able to google are commercial “conveyor toasters” costing hundreds of dollars and capable of toasting for a small army. The one I describe above was clearly made for the home market. If anybody knows where/if they’re available today, I’d probably buy one just to watch it make toast!

I wonder if cheapening modern toasters by reducing their heating coils contributes to the inconsistent results. I know my toast tends to be raw in places and burnt in others, which I attribute to uneven heating. Adding more coils and reducing the time of exposure should alleviate this problem.

[Carryon]

I make mine in a cooker and scrape off the burnt bits like any 50s sitcom housewife did…

I like how when I listen to old time radio shows from the WWII era they call it “pop up toast” and “pop up toaster.”

[Fridgemagnet]

@Francis_Vaughan

Dualit make a toaster that takes into account the ambient temperature and things like how many times it has toasted, and in what time, to compensate for the heating effects. But it won’t compensate for bread type or staleness of the bread.

There is a clue here. Doing so is actually cheap - cheap once you have paid for a microcontroller to drive the toaster. But note that they don’t try to detect the colour of the toast. My suspicion is that a toaster is a very unfriendly environment to place such sensors and expect them to last any useful time. Not at a cost that your average consumer is willing to pay.

I have a vague memory of working on the design of a Dualit toaster that did indeed use a sensor to detect the colour of the toast output. This was my boss’ idea, and he was rightly proud of his “patented toast detector”. I believe it may have been one of those hotel-type toasters with the metal conveyor, so the toastiness was probably modulated by controlling the conveyor speed. Hope that helps!

[withaK]

@Kevbo

My parents had an old 50-60’s vintage Sunbeam (I think??) toaster that worked pretty well…when it worked. It had a sensor that reacted to the IR radiation coming from the bread, so it gave a fairly consistent toast. It should be possible to do this better with modern IR thermometer techniques, but making the electronics survive inside the toaster might be an issue.

There was a big problem with the above toaster, as it used bimetal actuators to raise and lower the toast. The weight of one slice of bread worked a switch that turned on the elements, and the contacts on that switch were not very reliable…so you often had to try multiple times to get it to accept the bread.

This is it:
https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5586174/il_fullxfull.189669209.jpg

The lettering on the righthand slot tells you that this is the side that has the aforementioned switch, so you have to use that side if only making one slice.

I have one of those toasters. I inherited from my grandmother, it was a wedding present from 1952, and it still works.

Unfortunately for everyone else, Sunbeam stopped making them in 1997.

[glowacks]

I ate toast a lot as a kid for breakfast, but I get annoyed by potentially ruining bread meant for my consumption, so when I had to make my own breakfast, I just don’t toast my bread. I’ve taken to buying bread that I’m comfortable eating with just butter and without toasting, and it suits me fine. In fact, I’d probably rather have anything without that Malliard reaction; I’m just not a fan of the results consistently, and there’s some things I absolutely hate it on.

[Fear_Itself]

@CannyDan

Once upon a time long, long ago, some relative had a toaster that contained a traveling metal belt. You fed a slice of bread into one side of the toaster, upright but edge first. It would ride along on the conveyor belt, past the heat coils, and emerge out the other side. As I recall, you could change the darkness by varying the speed of the conveyor. It seemed to work really well, producing consistent toast. And it was fast. I guess that meant it had lots of heat coils.

That would be the Toast-o-Lator. About half way through the video, they show how it works, with the cover removed. It’s not so much a conveyor belt as a pair of toothed rails that alternate in a motion not unlike an elliptical exercise machine, to move the toast along.

[Chefguy]

@brickbacon

Get this:

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/m/products/8305349/?catalogId=92&sku=8305349&cm_ven=Google_PLA&cm_cat=Shopping&cm_pla=default&cm_ite=default&gclid=CKCCgu6rzMkCFckYHwodlD8FfQ&kwid=productads-plaid^82946570743-sku^8305349-adType^PLA-device^m-adid^49385482063

Works every time.

I have one of those. It does a pretty good job, but takes about 5-6 minutes to adequately toast a dense piece of bread. Toasts a bun in quick order, however.

[JRDelirious]

And yet …somehow… life goes on.

I find that I feel no urge to overtechnologize my toaster (toaster oven, actually) as I generally prefer only a mild degree of toastedness so I don’t push the envelope.

[CannyDan]

@Fear_Itself

That would be the…

YES! That’s it! Great detective work there! Just as I remembered, with one small difference – it’s not a conveyor belt, but my mind’s eye can perhaps be forgiven after the passage of so many years.

Now I want one! I’ll be searching, and I thank you for providing its name.