I'm looking to replace an old countertop toaster oven. I never used it for bread until recently after my main oven died. It seems to bake OK, but I think it's on its last legs. Now that convection or air fry toaster ovens are available, I thought that might also be a nice additional feature to have. But I especially want the bread baking task to work pretty well, fit a 12″ pizza, and spend <$150. The other consideration is space; the oven needs to be ≈18″ W to fit where the existing oven is.
Consumer Reports rates the baking ability of the Hamilton Beach XL 31460 (5/5) and the Gourmia GTF2440 (4/5) ovens. These are the top contenders at the moment.
Any other recommendations or comments are most welcome. Thanks!
MiniOven had several recommendations -years ago now- that might still be relevant. She commented on the features and one of the features was where the heating elements were located when baking (top, bottom or both) and weather you could control them separately.
Not finding what I wanted with a quick search but maybe these are helpful:
Summer Kitchen and Toaster Oven Baking | The Fresh Loaf
Mini oven. Help! | The Fresh Loaf
Thanks for the links. I hadn't seen the first one in my search. That Hamilton Beach oven looks similar to one that I'm considering.
For baking pan breads in a compact electric oven, here are some details I would scrutinize. Some of these details are unlikely to be found in mainstream reviews or the owners manuals.
: Working height, i.e. distance from the bottom rack to the top heater elements. More is better.
: How flimsy are the racks? Important if you plan on using a heavy pan or baking steel.
: Method used for temperature control. Most have a knob that changes the gap between bimetallic strips, located in the compartment next to the oven chamber. I have never found one of those that gave satisfactory results baking bread (including high-end models), they have large temp swings. The best I've found uses a variable-duty-cycle generator to directly control the on/off times of the heater elements.
: Exposed heater elements vs encased ones. I find the latter type poor for baking.
: "French Door" models are more likely to be leaky.
: A "Keep Warm" mode with temperature control is possibly useful for fermenting/proofing.
If I can think of anything else I'll come back and edit the post.
Thanks for the info. I had considered some of these criteria, but hadn't thought about the exposed/enclosed elements or the leakage possibility.
I don't suppose there is a way to determine the temperature control method without buying one and testing it. I hadn't thought about the leakage aspect of the French door models, but the oven I have now with a single door I'm sure is pretty leaky.
You had posted about the Walmart/Mainstays oven and was impressed with its baking ability and the fact that it has better control. Are you still satisfied with that model? It's also an oven I'm considering, but it doesn't have convection/air fry capabilities.
Not that I know of. My discovery of the WM model was a happy accident.
Yes. And I've continued to try out others in the meantime, including a top-of-the-liine Wolf. I did not suggest the WM model to you because it is 2" wider than your space for it. Yippee and GaryBishop have written about it as well.
They are cheap and reliable but don't provide tight temperature control.
I'm guessing that any ovens with more sophisticated control will proudly advertise it in their features.
Gary
Walmart doesn't seem to tout the better control of the Mainstays oven. I doubt most consumers realize that kind of control their oven has, just whether the pizza is done in about the time the box says it should be.
I could hear it click when I turned the knob.
Yes, it does for all modes except Toast.
I guess I misunderstood the description in this post:
It's a correct statement. You can measure the on-time length of each cycle, it gets shorter the lower you set the temp. But still quite regular, and a much shorter cycle than any other elec oven I've used.
But if you switch to Bake mode, which turns off the top heating elements, it only uses the bimetal temp sensor.
I'd take it apart to see how they do it. I gave it away when we no longer needed it.
It is a great little oven.
Gary
Would it be possible and, and more importantly, safe to control an oven with a separate temperature controller? I have a controller rated for 1800 W that could control an oven. Does using the Toast mode bypass the bimetallic thermostat and keep the heating elements on all the time? I know this is kind of a crazy idea.
If your controller is capable of rapid cycling (using triacs for example) it could provide tight temperature control by smoothly varying the duty cycle. With triacs it could switch only on zero crossings which would produce much less electrical noise.
I guess most controllers use relays and aren't really fast.
In either case, you could place the temperature sensor in a much better place so you would get sensing where it matters. The strip in the Mainstays is likely behind the knob.
You could operate the oven in any mode; just set the temperature knob to its maximum so their thermostat stays on.
That idea isn't crazy, it is worth a try.
Gary
No, it doesn't keep it on all the time. Once it gets up to temp (whatever that is), it uses a variable duty cycle generator to control the on-off times in Toast mode. I don't know how they accomplish that, but that's how it behaves.