Choosing the best toaster for optimum crunch

January 24th, 2012

Why can’t you find the ‘cancel’ button on the toaster in time to stop burning the bread? And why do toasters have a setting that burns toast to a crisp anyway? If your toaster is making you feel crumby it could be time to review your toaster and start making every crumb count.

Appreciating the history of toast

During WWI a Minnesotan mechanic became fed up with being served burnt toast at work and so he started to work on springs and a variable timer. By 1926 the first fully automatic toaster had popped up, but it wasn’t until the advent of sliced bread in 1933 that the toaster spread in popularity. Today, as any university student already knows, toasters are the most underrated of kitchen appliances. Is there anything you can’t put on toast? Peanut butter, Vegemite, jams, honey,

Pure Elements Toaster, TA8200

cheese, tomatoes, eggs (egg in a hole!), mince, baked beans, spaghetti, snags, sardines, the choice is almost as endless as one can be inventive.

Toaster reviews

Some of the things you’ll want to consider before picking a new toaster is how many slices you want to make at once, the right size to fit on your counter space and cupboards, will you want to toast wide slices or odd bits of bread such as crumpets or bagels, and how will the toaster fit into the rest of your kitchen design?

Sunbeam toasters

Pure Elements Toaster, TA8200B

The benchtop appliance specialists have a wide range of toasters to suit every kitchen. On sale right now at Appliances Online are two Sunbeam designer models, the Pure Elements TA8200 in silver, and the TA8200B in black.

The Pure Elements Toaster was designed in Sydney and last year picked for the Australian Design Awards. It is a two-slice toaster with self-centring extra wide and deep toasting carriages. These adjust to hold a variety of slices, thick or thin. It also has a ‘crumpet’ and ‘defrost’ settings.

Seven timing settings and electronic browning controls ensure your perfectly personalised level of crunch and a ‘ready’ beep let’s you know the toast is done. If you can’t find the ‘cancel’ button don’t stress, you can simply push up the lever to stop toasting!

Now at Appliances Online, these toasters are on sale for $96, down $43 from RRP$139!

Keri Algar

Having once had to sit on the washing machine to stop it from bouncing into oblivion, Keri is today delighted with the new (smoother running) technologies that make housework easier every day. A self-confessed lazy-bones, Keri seeks out quirky inventions that ease the human workload, such as the robotic vacuum cleaner (wow). And as soon as someone figures out a Jetsons-like self-cleaning house, she will happily lay her pen to rest and retire from appliance journalism. Until then, her pick is a fridge that will tell her smartphone when it's time to pick up more beer on the way home. Magic.

One response to “Choosing the best toaster for optimum crunch”

plumbing supplies says:

June 18, 2012 at 11:53 pm

If you decide on a toaster oven, you can still make toast, but you’ll find it useful for many other cooking tasks. Some are designed with settings for different uses, such as pizza reheating or defrosting.