KitchenAid adds length, width to bread cooking

A good toaster isn’t hard to build, but style isn’t always exuded by them. Fortunately if you need that in your bread toasting appliance, a couple of newbies from KitchenAid could be ideal.

Two models look to be heading to Australian shelves this month with the idea that a toaster need not be beige, nor should it reject larger styles of bread, for those of you keen on baking your own or buying unsliced loaves.

If you live in such a home now where boutique breads are what you live for, you’ll already be aware that some toasters have problems with thick slices and long slices, burning the edges in a way that isn’t just unsightly, but also affects the flavour, too.

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KitchenAid’s plan to prevent both situations arrives in the form of a four-slice long slot toaster, a variation on the typical appliance everyone has owned from some brand that features longer slots than your typical toaster that also happen to be a little wider, running at 38mm.

This extra width makes it ideal for home-baked and boutique breads cut to be long, such as sourdough and ciabatta. If you happen to want to toast four pieces of bread at once, provided they’re normal size, you can slot them in vertically and get that done, too.

One area improved upon is the lift from the toaster, and for that KitchenAid has built in a little extra headroom — sorry, we’ll call it “breadroom” — whereby you can raise the lift mechanism even more to take out slices that might be a little too small or too lowered to pick up.

Similarly, a “Peek & See” lift will let you check the toasting progress while keeping the bread cooking.

As for how much toasting you can get done, there are seven levels of cooking on offer, one of which is even made for people who love crumpets and can’t stand the soft slightly aerated dough going all hard and crispy across the board.

Pricing of the KitchenAid four-slice toaster chimes in at $199 in silver, red, cream, and black, while a two slice model without the extra long slots will save you a good $30 at $169.

The slightly less expensive two-lice toaster has thick yet short slots.
The slightly less expensive two-lice toaster has thick yet short slots.