Like almost everyone else in the free world, I grew up with a GE Toast-R-oven. I've cooked everything from toast (of course) pizza bagels (an important discovery as early as the 70th century) to TV dinners, and even baked fish in it. When I received as a gift when I bought my first house finely gave up the ghost, I replaced it with a $ 100 Hamilton Beach countertop convection oven can bake a whole bread, two pies, or a meatloaf. It also had a rotisserie with a spit you can impale a chicken, although I never tested this feature. I used it for years and did everything one would expect a compact Toaster Oven, except to make toast. The burners were too far apart.
Enter the Breville. Instead of mechanical timer and temperature control of the Hamilton Beach (and GE before that), this unit has full electronic control, which promises to be more precise in both functions. It can handle (say) a 12 "pizza, 4 slices of toast. So how does all this mean in practice?
As a toaster, it's fantastic. It toasts evenly than my $ 20 Target toaster and pull out crumb tray makes cleaning easy. Repeatability of excellent and you can obviously see the bread / bagel / what the bowls, watch out for burning. It compensates for the heat when you toast several items in a row, a big help. Still, for close to $ 200 you expect more than just toast from a machine like this.
I have not tried to bake a pie yet, but I did a little mini-muffins and they came out great. I have not done anything other than bread because it is far too small to handle a standard loaves of the size I bake. Maybe I can make some buns or rolls in it.
The timer function is a bit annoying in how it works. You set the time and temperature, and when it comes up to temperature, it begins the countdown. This is good for frozen pizzas and TV dinners, but less good for bakers trying to control the baking environment. I would prefer something that would come up to temperature and then wait for me to start the timer.
Half of the features on the main button is preset cooking programs such as microwave ovens in the lunchroom, which has buttons "Soup", "sandwich" and so on. There is a "cookies" feature but I have lots of different cookie recipes with different time and temperature settings. This program is worthless to me.
So: A great toaster and a good oven to bake very small objects. There is something deeper than the old Toast-R-oven, but still not large enough to handle more than a quarter sheet cake or a small pie. Useful for what it is, but given the price, it's getting close to a luxury single oven. I think the Breville BOV800XL Smart Oven 1800 Watts Convection Toaster Oven with Element IQ, resulting in convection and a larger furnace is a better deal overall, and if you really want a useful secondary furnace, as my Hamilton Beach 31197R Countertop Oven with Convection and Rotisserie is much more flexible.
Follow-up:
After just over three months using this oven, I am more convinced than ever that this is a great (if pricey) toaster. Unlike the pop-up toaster on my desk, you can set exactly the actual roasting time very practical and you can see until you get the right shade of Browning looking for.
I have also become more sympathetic to its use as an oven, too. There is still a bit small for most baking uses, but it is big enough to roast peppers or bake a few potatoes or even a small batch of cookies. I still think the larger version is a better all-around device, but for a small apartment kitchen, this may be a good choice.
Six-month update:
I think I've used this stove more and more for all of my toast and small baking needs, it also takes over some of the tasks I used to do in my microwave. It is still reliable, easy to maintain, and the precise electronic timer is a great improvement over the mechanical timers in cheaper ovens in both accuracy and reliability.
No comments:
Post a Comment