Toasters

While toast has been around since ancient times and derives its name from the Latin word "tostum" meaning scorching, the toaster has only been with us for about a century. Crompton and Company of Great Britain developed the first electric toaster in 1893 and the Americans came up with another version in 1909. However, they only did one side of the bread at a time and needed to be manually watched and the bread turned over when it looked done. The timed pop-up toaster made its appearance in 1919 thanks to an inventor named Charles Strite.

Within ten years bread slicing machines were developed to take advantage of this new machine that helped preserve the edibility of bread. With its popularity increased by the Wonder Bread Company in the 1930's toasters became a widespread and ubiquitous part of the kitchen's repertoire of appliances throughout the country. Being able to adjust the degree of browning to personal tastes, you can also pick a sliced bread toaster that handles two, four and even eight slices at a time.

As an offshoot of this development, a new appliance made its way into the kitchen workspace. It is an irony that the toaster oven does not toast bread very effectively, but is an excellent substitute for a full sized conventional oven when preparing smaller meals that require baking or broiling. While you can get very advanced toaster ovens that cost upward of $500, a simple counter sized toaster oven can be found for under $50. You can acquire toaster ovens that can be mounted under the kitchen cabinets and thus free up counter space in your work area or others that will mount under the counter top itself.

One of the advantages to the toaster oven is the movable rack configuration that allows its use with multiple sized meal items. Also, because of their small size and lightweight construction, toaster ovens are portable and can be moved out to the patio or garage if you don't want to have to travel back and forth to the kitchen every time you want a snack.

To further expand on the usefulness of this small cooking appliance convection toaster ovens have been developed that cook with forced air rather than direct heating coils. Some of the larger convection toaster ovens come with a rotisserie rack for slow roasting of meats and vegetables.

Cuisinart, Oster and Black and Decker make some of the best toaster ovens on the market but studying the consumer reviews will help you decide which brand to purchase which has the features and warranties you prefer.