a new toaster oven

We use our toaster oven almost daily. It was disconcerting, then, when we tried to toast our bread at breakfast and it would not turn on. Not always but sometimes. It was also of concern that the cord got hot. My brother, who is a firefighter, told us that was a fire hazard and that we should get a new toaster oven now and not wait for the after-Christmas sales. We were going to anyway, but that just reinforced our plan.

We went to Bed Bath & Beyond and found a model we liked. We brought it home only to discover that the timer on the toast setting did not work. It didn’t count down the time. It just sat there and burned the toast. We used it for a couple of days and realized that it wasn’t operator error; the timing mechanism was defective. I took it back to BB&B and got a refund.

I began searching on Amazon and found a model that looked really good. It was a Hamilton Beach six slice toaster oven with a convection setting. I ordered it and when it arrived we immediately put it to the test. We have toasted bread, made garlic bread, made open-faced sandwiches, and baked a frozen pizza with the convection setting. It’s much better than the microwave for warming up leftover deli pizza. We’re pleased.

One of the nice things about it is the way the lid opens up, so that we don’t have to reach inside to get our food. We didn’t particularly want to replace our toaster oven, but since we had to we think that we’ve made a very good choice.