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 Toasters
This guide is dedicated to stand alone pop-up toasters. A pop-up toaster is a small appliance which uses heating filiments (which you also find in cooker grills, composed of a nichrome wire) to brown bread, crumpets or muffins. A toaster can feature up to twelve slots or more for commercial purposes, but a domestic toaster usually features 2, 4, 6 or 8 slots. The speed a toaster can brown bread is reliant upon the power (watts) it produces, on average it takes between one and three minutes for a toaster to complete it's task. Alongside the heating element, every toaster will feature a mechanical timer, it may take a few tries before you know how long it takes a new toaster on average to brown bread. But once the heating element is hot, the time is take is less for each try after. Therefore it can be quite difficult to set a mechanical timer accurately if you're continually using a toaster. Some toasters, like the TT911P2 from Siemens have aimed to solve this problem, by using a digital control for more accurate toasting. Some toaster even feature a programme setting which automatically turns off the toaster when it detects an item is burning. Before this technological advent, previous commercial toasters contained a sensor which used a thermal strip. These strips of material were the first attempt by manufacturers to automatically sense the heat of the bread being toasted. One issue with pop-up toasters is the width and the depth of the slots. A common complaint with toasters is the bread getting stuck in the slots, which must subsequently be freed manually. Therefore, a toaster with wide and deep slots is desirable, and a prominent selling feature. Why don't all manufacturers provide deep and wide slots? cost cutting. A deeper slot requires more heating elements, a wider slot requires a toaster to provide more watts to burn thin bread placed in the slot. A wide slot also means items like crumpets, teacakes, muffins, and bagels are more easily supported. A removable crumb tray is one of the most common features available on a toaster. However, some bargain basement toaster do not even include this. Therefore, your average toaster should include a heating element, mechanical timer and a crumb tray. Finally, when it comes to customer surveys, users say the most important function of a toaster is reliability. Toasters appear to have a history of unreliability, most certainly since the 1970's, with heating filiment packing up within a couple of years. This was not always the case, during the 1950's and 60's reliability and workmanship seems to have hit a peak. A customer could expect their appliance to last at least ten years. Some manufacturers like Dualit and Magimix have taken this on board.
They have designed simple toasters, containing the minimum of fuss. A
mechanical timer and crumb tray is all you can expect. But, they have
manufactured handmade, chrome finished works of art, which live up to
the spirit of the 50's. Customer satisfaction surveys have indicated a
Dualit toaster will last a decade or more. Of course, it comes at a price,
you can expect to pay £100 or more.
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