BALMUDA The Toaster | Steam Oven Toaster | 5 Cooking Modes - Sandwich Bread, Artisan Bread, Pizza, Pastry, Oven | Compact Design | Baking Pan | K01M-KG | Black | US Version

Product Information

Whether you’re toasting or reheating, the Balmuda offers far less control. You have to rely on its preset functions (and three fixed temperature settings), and while you may think this could take the guesswork out of cooking, I found it limiting and confusing. When my toast came out half-golden, have blonde, I had no choice but to start the preset function over again to toast the other side: no adding a few minutes or increasing the temperature slightly. We toasted every bread-like thing we could find lurking about, both fresh and stale, from bread to English muffins. The result was excellent each time. Because of the toaster’s small size, we could toast a maximum of two standard bread slices or two English muffins (four split halves).

Our development team brought some bread along to grill with the meat. For some mysterious reason, the toast came out perfectly: crisp on the outside and moist on the inside. If we could reproduce this, we thought, BALMUDA could make a revolutionary toaster! I have to be honest, it really didn’t change much. First, my toast experience was not transcendent. Each slice of toast comes out crisp and golden brown—but only on the top. The bottom was softer and considerably paler, and I wasn’t sure whether that was the toaster’s intention or if there was a problem with the bottom heating unit. The interior of the bread was certainly never dry, but I struggled to parse out any noticeable improvement over toast made in a conventional toaster. Pizza and tuna melts melted beautifully, but not in any way that was superior to the broil setting on my standard toaster. As for pastries: Yes, I will say that it did make croissants feel bakery-fresh. The steam action proved to be great in elevating day-old pastries and staler bread. Update: This headline of this article was changed to note the fact that the toaster is made in Japan. The three essential elements of culinary delight. BALMUDA The Toaster uses steam technology and precise temperature control to bring out the best in every kind of bread. Its Oven Mode can also cook other items to perfection.Two days later, an incredibly heavy box arrived on my doorstep. Nested inside were two more boxes, each one smaller and somehow heavier feeling. Finally, I pulled out a car-battery sized transformer. Intense in its ugliness, it cast the odor of uncured plastic in a five-foot radius around it. A yin to Balmuda's cute yang, it nevertheless got the toaster working. Still, I found myself missing my other toaster throughout the length of the testing period. I have a toaster oven that is essentially a miniature oven, and I use it for far more than just toast. It has a ton of preprogrammed settings, while also giving me the option to control time, temperature, and fan speed (for air frying and convection cooking). I rifled through the manual then asked my editor: "We aren't 220 volts like Korea, are we?" Two lines lower, the cover of the manual read "FOR USE IN KOREA ONLY. NO QUALITY ASSURANCE FOR OVERSEAS USE."

This mode delivers a delicious contrast between a crisp exterior and a moist interior. Ideal for everyday thin-sliced bread and English muffins from the supermarket. Adjust the timer to obtain the desired level of brownness. Buttery croissants become warm and crisp without burning. Rolls come out piping hot, even in the center. Heated baguettes remain light and airy on the inside with a wonderfully crisp crust—as delicious as in a restaurant! BALMUDA The Toaster has four modes designed to heat various types of bread to perfection. The additional oven mode can be used to cook various oven dishes. Sandwich Bread Mode I'd done some research on toasters a year prior and found the industry to be something of a confused sea: neither the brand nor the amount of money—from dirt-cheap to ludicrous—spent on a toaster guaranteed quality. It's also not a space rife with innovation. The toasters we're using today and the ones manufactured a generation ago are pretty similar, though the ones we're using now tend to be chintzier.Toward the end of the cycle, the steam stops and there's a burst of power to the heating elements, giving the bread a last-moment nudge toward toasty perfection. Is Balmuda The Toaster the perfect toaster? That depends on you. Is something better because it brings you a bit of joy when you use it or just look at it? The Balmuda is unable to accommodate anything larger than two slices of regular bread. I’m all for small-batch oven dishes, but this is small to a degree that did not feel quite as practical for my purposes. It really is just a luxurious food reheater. Who is this for? That said, as a food writer, restaurant critic, and a cookbook author, I'm constantly looking for the little things that turn the quality up a whisker, quietly transforming a good meal into a memorable one. What this can be is always a variable: farm-fresh ingredients, tasting and seasoning at every step of the cooking process, the use of fat and acidity to heighten flavors, or attention to texture, to name a few. When the door closes, a flap on top neatly hides the area where water is added. The water travels down a tube in the side of the oven and onto a trough that turns the water into steam. A removable cover over that trough keeps it free of cooking debris, but if water is added when it’s not needed, it’s simple to remove the cover to mop up the water.