How to use a toaster — what it is and what it can do

Wealth­i­er cit­i­zens get them­selves maids and cooks. Some con­ser­v­a­tive women still pre­fer house­work to work. How­ev­er, the major­i­ty solves the issues of food con­sump­tion in cater­ing estab­lish­ments. Numer­ous cafes adorn the urban land­scape, where you can eat tasty and inex­pen­sive.

Kitchen uten­sils are grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing from mod­ern apart­ments. The nick­el-plat­ed splen­dor of pots and the appe­tiz­ing siz­zle of fry­ing pans are no longer a sign of fam­i­ly wealth. But one device still retains its posi­tion, because with­out it it is impos­si­ble to imag­ine morn­ing tea or a pic­nic in the coun­try.

How to use the toaster?

Con­sid­er how to use a bread toast­er:

• Insert one slice of bread into each slot.
• Use the adjust­ing knob to set the desired degree of done­ness for the bread. Most mod­els have five divi­sions: 1 is the light­est roast, 5 is the strongest. If you are using the unit for the first time, turn the knob 2–3.
• Now low­er the lever that is respon­si­ble for the start of cook­ing.
• Depend­ing on which mode you have select­ed, the bread will brown for 1–2 min­utes. If the appli­ance is run­ning longer or the kitchen smells of burn­ing, turn off the toast­er imme­di­ate­ly!
• As soon as the food is ready, the lever will rise up, and the device (depend­ing on the mod­el) will emit a spe­cial sig­nal. You have prob­a­bly seen this in the video on how to use the toast­er.
• In some mod­els, the toasts them­selves are “thrown” up — they can be reached by hand. In some mod­els — no, you have to get the bread with wood­en tongs. Met­al objects, forks in order to pick up toast, can not be used. After all, met­al is a good con­duc­tor, and your toast­er is pow­ered by elec­tric­i­ty.

Also read: The main para­me­ters that you should pay atten­tion to when choos­ing a toast­er

Instructions for toasters of popular brands

Let us dwell in detail on the oper­at­ing instruc­tions for toast­ers of mod­els com­mon on the mar­ket.

Instructions for using the Tefal toaster

The man­u­fac­tur­er gives instruc­tions on how to use the toast­er:

1. Plug in the appli­ance to start using the Tefal toast­er.
2. Turn the tem­per­a­ture con­trol knob to the desired set­ting: 1–2 — keep warm, medi­um rare, 3 — light brown, 4–5 — medi­um roast, 6–7 — deep roast, toast­ing frozen bread. The few­er loaves are loaded, the small­er the num­ber you need to choose.
3. Check that the slice load­ing lever remains in the up posi­tion.
4. Load a piece of toast into each slot — as the heroes of numer­ous videos do, how to use bread toast­ers.
5. Push the load lever down.
6. As soon as the prod­ucts are fried to the right con­di­tion, the lever inde­pen­dent­ly rais­es the toasts up, and the device itself com­pletes its work.
7. If you need to inter­rupt the oper­a­tion of the device in an emer­gency, turn the ther­mo­sta­t­ic con­trol knob to the “Stop” posi­tion.

How to use your Philips toaster?

The instruc­tion man­u­al is almost the same — here’s how to prop­er­ly use the Philips toast­er:

1. Con­nect the device to the net­work.
2. Place the toast­ers in the ded­i­cat­ed slots.
3. Select the done­ness mode to con­tin­ue using your Philips toast­er.
4. Press the lever to low­er the loaves down.
5. As soon as the prod­uct is toast­ed to the desired state, the lever will auto­mat­i­cal­ly raise the slices, the appli­ance will fin­ish work­ing.

Also read: TOP 20 best toast­ers: Rat­ing of 2021 and which mod­el to choose for your home accord­ing to cus­tomer reviews

How to use the Moulinex toaster?

Let’s ana­lyze the instruc­tions on how to use the Mulinex toast­er:

1. Turn the pow­er knob to the active state — the but­ton should light up. If you press this burn­ing key, you will stop the oper­a­tion of the device, turn it off.
2. Select the desired done­ness lev­el by turn­ing the knob.
3. Place the bread in the slots, low­er the load­ing levers down.
4. The prod­uct is fried for 2–2.5 min­utes, after which the slices auto­mat­i­cal­ly rise to the top with a char­ac­ter­is­tic sound sig­nal­ing their prepa­ra­tion.

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing how to use the sand­wich toast­ers of the same com­pa­ny, then the instruc­tions will be the same, with the only dif­fer­ence being that the prod­ucts are not laid ver­ti­cal­ly, but hor­i­zon­tal­ly. There­fore, it is not nec­es­sary to press the bread low­er­ing lever.

How to use toasters from other brands?

How to use Roy­al kuchen or Red­mond toast­ers? Let us remind you once again that the process of oper­at­ing toast­ers of var­i­ous mod­els and man­u­fac­tur­ers is sim­i­lar.

There­fore, you can use the uni­ver­sal instruc­tions pub­lished above or the video below.

toaster oven

This appli­ance com­bines the func­tions of a toast­er, oven and microwave. A toast­er oven does­n’t put out the thou­sands of joules of ener­gy that can turn a kitchen into hell, and it does­n’t take up much space.

With it, you can fry meat, bake piz­za, reheat, defrost and keep warm. The toast­er oven belongs to the hor­i­zon­tal units.

This means that you can not only fry bread, but also reheat sand­wich­es. This is not pos­si­ble with ver­ti­cal toast­ers.

Toaster Care Instructions

It is not enough to use the toast­er cor­rect­ly — do not for­get to clean the device after each use. This is what will allow the toast­er to serve for a long time, main­tain a decent appear­ance and not be cov­ered with soot inside and out.

Wet clean­ing is shown only for the out­er pan­els of the toast­er! You can buy spe­cial clean­ing prod­ucts, or you can act with a solu­tion of vine­gar or soda. Abra­sive sub­stances, espe­cial­ly for alu­minum pan­els, are pro­hib­it­ed — they leave ugly scratch­es.

Also read: The main para­me­ters that you should pay atten­tion to when choos­ing a toast­er

As for clean­ing the inter­nal sur­faces, there are two options accord­ing to the toast­er instruc­tion man­u­al:

• Has a remov­able tray. All the crumbs set­tle on this device. To clean it, remove the tray, shake off the crumbs, wash with dish gel, wipe dry with a cloth, return it back.
• No remov­able tray. Cov­er the table with news­pa­per or cling film. Then turn the toast­er upside down over it and shake it a lit­tle to shake out all the crumbs. You can also use a hair dry­er or a spe­cial brush.

Precautionary measures

The appli­ance is a fire haz­ard, so you need to place it in the kitchen in free space, away from the edge of the coun­ter­top, and also make sure that there are no cur­tains near­by. Water must not be allowed to come into con­tact with a work­ing toast­er, oth­er­wise the hot heat­ing ele­ments will burst with the release of sparks.

It is rec­om­mend­ed to con­nect the equip­ment to the mains only dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion of toasts, and dis­con­nect the pow­er cord at the end of work. It is unac­cept­able to cov­er the case with a cloth, in order to avoid over­heat­ing and fire. It is impor­tant to read the instruc­tions for use with­out fail.

So that car­bon deposits do not form on the heat­ing wires, the instruc­tions pro­vide for reg­u­lar clean­ing inside the case. It is pos­si­ble to clean the loca­tion of the spi­rals only in a dry way, with a brush or brush. You can only wash the out­side of the case with a damp cloth and deter­gent.

Toaster Safety

A small handy unit can eas­i­ly start a fire or cause seri­ous injury to you.

There­fore, using the device, do not for­get about the safe­ty of the toast­er:

• Install it away from cur­tains, hang­ing tow­els, paper tis­sue trays, and oth­er objects that ignite quick­ly and eas­i­ly.
• Make sure the unit is locat­ed away from a sink. If drops of water fall on the heat­ing ele­ments dur­ing their oper­a­tion, the lat­ter may sparkle or burst.
• To use the toast­er safe­ly, store the appli­ance in a box or on a kitchen cab­i­net shelf only when it has com­plete­ly cooled down.
• Toast­er safe­ty rules say: only dry bread and foods that are approved by the man­u­fac­tur­er of your mod­el are toast­ed. In no case should you put slices in a pack­age, smeared with oil, jam, jam, etc.
• Get in the habit of turn­ing off your appli­ances imme­di­ate­ly after cook­ing.
• Make sure that the device does not get wet and that water does not get inside it.
• While the device is con­nect­ed to a pow­er out­let, do not touch it with var­i­ous met­al prod­ucts. Oth­er­wise, you may just get elec­tro­cut­ed. In order to get bread slices with­out burn­ing your­self, buy wood­en tongs.
• Do not touch the appli­ance with your hand, do not put your fin­gers into the slots to get bread. You may be severe­ly burned as the device oper­ates at high tem­per­a­tures.
• If food is stuck in the toast­er, remove it by unplug­ging the appli­ance and wait­ing for it to cool down.
• Clean, mak­ing sure it is unplugged from the out­let.
• Do not cov­er the toast­er with oven mitts, tow­els, or plas­tic bags while the appli­ance is run­ning.

Also read: TOP 20 best toast­ers: Rat­ing of 2021 and which mod­el to choose for your home accord­ing to cus­tomer reviews

Origins of the invention

Our ances­tors learned how to bake bread and improve its taste cen­turies ago, using prim­i­tive hand tools and fire.

The Latin word “tos­tum” means “burn”, it was it that became the basis for the name that the first elec­tric appli­ance for toast­ing slices of bread received.

The his­to­ry of the inven­tion of the toast­er began at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, when elec­tri­fi­ca­tion in the coun­tries of the world was gain­ing momen­tum.

1. In 1893, the British com­pa­ny Cromp­ton & Com­pa­ny demon­strat­ed an elec­tri­cal device — the pro­to­type of the mod­ern toast­er. The heat­ing ele­ment of this device was made on the basis of iron wires. The bread was toast­ed on one side and had to be turned over by hand. It was unsafe to use the device due to the con­stant spark­ing of the wires.
2. The Amer­i­can com­pa­ny Gen­er­al Elec­tric in 1909 man­u­fac­tured a safer elec­tric toast­er with a nichrome heater. But the bread also had to be man­u­al­ly turned to toast on both sides.
3. In 1913, the Cope­mans invent­ed a bread-turn­ing mech­a­nism. But you still had to keep track of the time of toast­ing bread, turn­ing the toast­er on and off.
4. A lit­tle lat­er, the toast­er was equipped with a timer, and in 1925, thanks to the inven­tion of Charles Straight, the device received the func­tion of “pop­ping up” bread after roast­ing was com­plet­ed.

All sub­se­quent years, man­u­fac­tur­ers have brought the design and func­tion­al­i­ty of their devices to per­fec­tion. Cur­rent­ly, dozens of com­pa­nies around the world pro­duce this elec­tri­cal equip­ment that is in demand in the mod­ern kitchen.

Useful tips when working with a toaster

In con­clu­sion, here are some expert tips to help you get the most out of your toast­er and trou­bleshoot minor issues your­self.

Here’s what you need to know before using your toast­er for the first time:

• If the bread is stuck in the slot, squeeze the work start lever, and then firm­ly (but gen­tly) pull it up. The prod­uct should fly out quick­ly.
• Toast as many slices of bread as pos­si­ble at once. If two slots, then two toasts, if four slots, then four pieces. This will keep the device from over­heat­ing, and will allow you not to spend excess elec­tric­i­ty.
• Use bread slices of medi­um thick­ness — it is best to buy spe­cial bread for toast. Too thin pieces quick­ly dry out to a state of crack­er or, even worse, burn out. And if the bread is too thick, then its edges can touch the heat­ing ele­ments, from which they sim­ply char.
• Frozen bread can only be cooked in toast­ers with the defrost option. That is, the machine first defrosts the prod­uct, and then browns. If you put frozen bread in an ordi­nary toast­er, the result will be dis­as­trous: the slice will burn on the out­side, but inside it will remain cold and damp.
• Get into the habit of col­lect­ing bread­crumbs from the remov­able tray after each use. You can give them to the birds.

Oster Jelly Bean (about 2 thousand rubles)

Which toast­er is bet­ter among bud­get mod­els? The 2‑compartment Oster Jel­ly Bean is an amaz­ing val­ue-for-mon­ey prod­uct that eas­i­ly com­petes with expen­sive devices in terms of per­for­mance. Its glossy fin­ish will enhance the design of your kitchen. In addi­tion, it has a com­pact size and will fit even on a small table.

The device has many of the same fea­tures as its more expen­sive com­peti­tors, includ­ing sev­en brown­ing set­tings, one-way keep warm, defrost, reheat and can­cel. It also offers wide com­part­ment open­ings and adjustable bread hold­ers that auto­mat­i­cal­ly cen­ter the slice for even toast­ing.

When the ques­tion aris­es which com­pa­ny is bet­ter to buy a toast­er, many experts rec­om­mend the Oster brand. This is because this man­u­fac­tur­er uses Toast Log­ic tech­nol­o­gy in all of their appli­ances. This means that the device adjusts the toast­ing time to com­pen­sate for the tem­per­a­ture and stress dur­ing the cook cycle.

Oster Jel­ly Bean is easy to use and easy to clean. The cord is almost 60 cm long, and since the toast­er is very com­pact, many con­sumers pre­fer to move it around the kitchen and some­times store it in a cup­board. The remov­able crumb tray comes out very eas­i­ly and you can sim­ply wipe it with a damp cloth to clean it.

Pros:

• afford­able;
• styl­ish and com­pact;
• easy to use and main­tain.

Minus­es:

• the slots are wide, but not very deep;
• there is no way to wrap or tuck away the long cord.