The Lemon Fool

We are looking for a replacement toaster as our 10 years old one has given up the ghost. OH bought a colour cordinated Kitchen Aid red two slot one at some cost but it toasts unevenly and will be returned. The replacement has to make toast at least as well as the old cheapo one did. The specs. are that it toasts a single slice fairly well and that is that! Auto up and down, sandwiches, defrost, bagels (who eats those?) do not enter the equation, it just has to toast sliced bread properly!

John

I usually buy the cheapest that Tesco offer and throw it away (into the small appliances skip at the dump) when it goes wrong. Probably £5 or so a go. They work well enough for me.

TJH

Got one of these (well, an apparently identical earlier version) 3 years ago and totally happy with its performance
http://www.argos.co.uk/product/5444386

Not cheap but does exactly what I need.

One or two slices of bread are toasted perfectly evenly on both sides.

--kiloran

tjh290633 wrote:I usually buy the cheapest that Tesco offer and throw it away (into the small appliances skip at the dump) when it goes wrong. Probably £5 or so a go. They work well enough for me.

TJH

I have a £6 toaster from Tesco bought a few weeks ago. Absolutely useless as it tends to under cook on one side meaning you have to turn the bread to get an even toast. I am looking for an alternative so this thread is of interest.

It's a pity the Morphy Richards TU1D is not still available. I had one a university in 1974 and one of my nerdy techie friend showed how to remove the pop up damping mechanism so that it threw the toast out about three feet in the air when it was done! Happy days, relieving the munchies with thick sliced Sunblest white toast with SunPat peanut butter...I lived almost solely on that for a few months at a time!

http://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ ... ic-toaster

Apparently they last a long time:

The couple believe the toaster, which was made in the same year as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, cost around £20. Despite three house moves, they've never had to replace it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... z599j7H0lo

I now have a Dualit two slice that I picked up at the local recycling centre...a woman in a Range Rover was taking it out of the back of her car. I offered to take it off her hands. It needed a new element and has been providing toast daily for our family of six for around ten years!

https://www.dualit.com/products/2-slice-newgen

I think the cheapest is about £150 now though, although that probably compares favourably with the TU1D linked to above £20 in 1953, apparently equivalent to over £500 today!

John

Good site here:
http://www.best-toasters.co.uk/

IMHO a raid toast is important. Once you have used a fast one, with solid state timer, such as Tefal Avanti 1200W hi speed, the old Morphy Richards TU1D won't cut it (I also saw it this week in the Science Museum ground floor).

Beware of Russell Hobbs toasters: I bought one three years ago and found that the slots were not wide nor deep enough to accept a 'normal' slice of bread. I took it back to the shop (a branch of the Co-op) and was told that "we have had a lot returned with exactly the same problem".
I then had a cheap Breville that didn't last very long.
I currently use a cheapish 4-slot Morphy Richards that has been fine.

stewamax wrote:Beware of Russell Hobbs toasters: I bought one three years ago and found that the slots were not wide nor deep enough to accept a 'normal' slice of bread.

I found that was a problem with many toasters, so specifically chose the Russell Hobbs model because it could handle a normal-sized slice.

--kiloran

kiloran wrote:

stewamax wrote:Beware of Russell Hobbs toasters: I bought one three years ago and found that the slots were not wide nor deep enough to accept a 'normal' slice of bread.

I found that was a problem with many toasters, so specifically chose the Russell Hobbs model because it could handle a normal-sized slice.

One man's normal sized slice is another man's half a slice

When I thought that our current toaster was giving up, a year or 2 back, during a similar conversation at the old place I said I was going to make a template of a piece of toast to take with me when we went toaster shopping so that I could try to get one deep enough to take a slice of a farmhouse loaf, as we get from our baker. Well I have the template, but the toaster recovered so I am still turning the slice over, half way through toasting.

The other problem with our current mechanism is that if you do have a small slice the lift mechanism doesn't lift the toast enough to be able to get it out without burning your fingers, so you end up poking with a knife, which is not really that safe.

Slarti

Slarti wrote:The other problem with our current mechanism is that if you do have a small slice the lift mechanism doesn't lift the toast enough to be able to get it out without burning your fingers, so you end up poking with a knife, which is not really that safe.

Slarti

Can I recommend a pair of wooden tweezers, as sold by Lakeland and others, see https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=woode ... PHXoGXvvgP for a selection.

TJH

Toasters and kettles- just get a cheap one. My Sainsburys toaster was £10 on offer. My Haden (Pifco) kettle was bought for me by my sister from a discount store and is still working after 24 years of almost daily use..

My mum's been through loads of £30+ lighty-up bells and whistles efforts.
I know the water hardness makes a difference, but even so ..
me still using the same kettle I had in a bedsit in Crouch End in the early 1990s..

Edit: mid 1990s , just worked out it would have been Dec 94 so a mere 23 years for a sub-£10 kettle. Prob more like £5
Perhaps I should take it back?

The thing I hate about cheap toasters is that the timing\toastiness consistency is poor and seems to get worse as the toaster ages, so you never get two slices (or pitta bread, in my case) that are toasted the same. For the past year I've been using a stopwatch...

RC

Thanks for the replies, but the OH has decided to exchange the "Rolls Royce" toaster for another of the same genre. She likes the colour! If it had been me, a cheapo would have been selected in the first place.

john

Reformerdcharacter: just aim to underdo and keep popping back in for 30s.
I do insist my toasters have an early release button..
No idea how the timer works, just some cheap shite like bimetallic strip??

AleisterCrowley wrote:Reformerdcharacter: just aim to underdo and keep popping back in for 30s.
I do insist my toasters have an early release button..
No idea how the timer works, just some cheap shite like bimetallic strip??

It probably is something like that. When the temperature has got high enough, then it cuts off. When you toast a single slice, there is usually a side which works better.

TJH

Slarti wrote:The other problem with our current mechanism is that if you do have a small slice the lift mechanism doesn't lift the toast enough to be able to get it out without burning your fingers, so you end up poking with a knife, which is not really that safe. Slarti

A bamboo satay skewer is a cheap-as-chips kitchen tool and versatile. Swiftly skewering a slice of toast to turn it, without lifting the mechanism, is one of them.

ReformedCharacter wrote:... For the past year I've been using a stopwatch...

RC

I've just tried that, and it didn't get warm

As I expected, the replacement KitchenAid machine went back as well! We now have a Kenwood Turbo and it makes great toast, a bonus is that is also RED, thus matching the rest of the gadgetry.

John

We have a 2 slice dualit toaster which has been working flawlessly for about 12 years. It has a mechanical timer which winds back to the start position, it ticks away slowly rotating back toward the off position before suddenly snapping back from the last registration mark with a satisfying clunk.

We've got used to its quirks over the years and as Slarti mentioned small pieces of bread can be a problem, though as the toaster has a mechanical lifting arm, I've found whacking it hard with the edge of my fist will cause the toast to come flying out the top of the toaster.

I like toast - a lot. I have this daydream where I've acquired one of the motorised toasters that you find in some hotels. Send a trial slice through to make sure the toast is just right, then have my wife feeding slices in one end while I wait at the other end with half a pound of butter and a knife trying to keep up