Photo: Flickr/my-retrospace.blogspot.com

Anastacia Marx de Salcedo
Guest Contributor, Slow Food Boston

In the world of kitchen appliances, there are the rock stars—attention sluts who demand your all, pre, post and during the act; yes, I’m talking about YOU, food processor—and then there are the librarians—mild-mannered, hardworking and low-maintenance. We’ve all had our dalliances with the Premium Margaritaville Trio Frozen Concoction Maker or the SousVide Supreme Water Oven, but when it comes time to settle down, you know as well as I do. There’s only one machine we couldn’t live without: the toaster oven.

It’s taken me years to appreciate the appliance’s importance in my life. In addition to inducing the Maillard reaction in sliced bread, it performs almost all the oven cooking I ever do: the roasting of vegetables (asparagus, beets, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, eggplant, green beans, okra, onion, peppers, potatoes, pumpkin, squash, yam, zucchini); the baking of pizzas, cakes, quick-breads and pies; and even the occasional broiling of a steak or two. And it does that in .5-.75 cubic feet, using 1225 watts per hour, and with a minimum of fuss and clean-up. My toaster, my rock, my kitchen salvation.

Like so many discoveries (the Americas, for starters), the toaster is the product of a get-rich-quick scheme gone awry. In the early 1900s, the enterprising young William Hoskins set about converting 200 pounds of metal compounds into rubies with a blow torch. His early attempts succeeded only in alienating the neighbors, who were rather finicky about having their homes and possessions set ablaze. Later prototypes, in which he’d replaced fire with electrical heating elements built from a specially-designed, high-resistance alloy, still failed to generate the envisioned heap ‘o’ gems. They did, however, turn out to be an excellent way to toast bread.

Within the decade, corporate America was deeply embroiled in the toaster wars. Four slicers! Metal casing! Springs! Timers! By the 1950s, the shiny, squat intruder had insinuated its way into virtually every home. These bread-centric devices ruled for decades, despite GE’s 1956 debut of the somewhat primitive Toast-R-Oven (think toaster welded to broiler). Then in the 1980s, the consumer mood, darkened by repeatedly prying bagels and personal pizzas out of toaster slots, shifted. A ray of sunlight slanting over the countertop illuminated the glory of this hitherto ignored kitchen machine. It was like a stove! But cuter and chiller… The appliance equivalent of FWB.

TOASTER OVEN COOKING TIPS

• As in a regular oven, the three things that matter in toaster oven cookery are location of the heat source, placement of the rack and temperature.
• As in electric ovens (but not all gas ones, which sometimes have a separate broiler compartment), a toaster oven has both top and bottom heating units. Both units are active for settings such as bake, roast and toast. (Traditionally, baking was done in an enclosed space while roasting was done over the open flame, but nowadays temperature is the primary distinction.)
• For baking, use temperatures of 300-350° and place rack in the middle. The exceptions are pie, which may do better on the bottom, especially if it’s filling-dense; yeast bread; and, if you’re a crisp-crust person, pizza.
• For roasting, use temperatures of 400-420° and place rack in the middle. If you are roasting vegetables, toss them with (cheap) olive oil, kosher salt and cook until flaccid and wizened. Delish!
• For the broil function, only the top heating unit is active (it will heat to maximum temperature automatically). The rack should be placed close underneath, but not so close your food ignites.
• If you have a convection toaster oven, yay for you! Convection cooking uses a small fan to circulate hot air and is more efficient than regular cooking. If your toaster doesn’t do it for you, dial down the temperature by 25° and shorten cooking time by 25%.

For more about this stalwart domestic tool, why not pay a virtual visit to The Toaster Museum Foundation, dedicated to “educating, entertaining, and enlightening people about the history and cultural importance of the bread toaster?”