It also comes with an air fry/dehydrate basket rack and a broiling rack that fits inside its enamel roasting pan. But we still prefer the Cuisinart’s ceramic pizza stone over the Breville’s nonstick pizza pan (though Breville does sell a pizza stone separately for around $30). For the past two years, two Wirecutter employees have used the Hamilton Beach for basic tasks like making toast, reheating pizza, and baking frozen snacks. One of our testers initially tried toasting bread in the baking pan, which only browned the top of the bread. As with all models, you want to remove the pan and toast bread directly on the oven rack.
Roll-top door makes it easy to clean, reach, or quickly transfer hot food. Like traditional ovens, many toaster ovens use convection heating or at least offer it as an option for baking. Other models make up for the lack of convection with multiple heating elements placed around the oven. The GE Quartz Convection Toaster Oven and the GE Calrod Convection Toaster Oven are identical, except that one has quartz heating elements and the other has Calrod heating elements. The quartz model costs about $25 more than the Calrod version (at the time of this publishing), but there wasn’t a huge difference in performance between the two. The underside of the toast we made was very uneven and patchy in the GE Quartz, while the GE Calrod toasted a bit more evenly.
We measured the cooking chamber volume to be around 12.81 liters, slightly different than the manufacturer’s provided capacity of 11.67 liters. Different from most other toaster ovens, the Mueller’s Bake function only uses the lower heating elements as opposed to lower and upper. For our Toast test, we started off by trying the Medium Toast setting which was around 3 minutes 5 seconds on the timer. The four pieces of bread on the upper tray level came out only lightly toasted on top except for one golden brown piece. We then cranked it up to the Dark Toast setting—around 4 minutes 50 seconds on the timer—which, unfortunately, burnt the toast a bit. In terms of design score, the two toaster ovens are quite equal.
The bake and broil functions will be all you need if you know your way around the kitchen. The temperature knob also includes a Min setting which, at 100°F, can act as a ‘keep warm’ option. However, the chicken’s internal temperature was 185°F-192°F, higher than the USDA recommended 165°F-180°F. When we slid the pan in, the top of the chicken breast grazed the upper heating element’s guard and was seared.
The toaster oven has a timer which I can set at the my desire time and it also has a auto shutoff I can set just in case I leave the house and I am not able to turn it off myself. The toaster oven comes with a slide out tray, bake pan and a broil grid. Each of these items are easy to take out of hamilton beach toaster oven the oven and it is easy to wash and clean. It is very easy to use, I just turn it on to my desire temperature and set the time I want it to last for. The oven looks pretty simple but to me that it is not a negative. Safety
Has been safe to use for me.
Ease of Cleaning
Pretty simple to clean.
Inside the box are also a user manual and a simple recipe booklet. Nonetheless, our chef decided to stop the roasting as the color wouldn’t improve anyway and to avoid overcooking the meat. This cooking time was the equivalent of a 6/10 according to our data. hamilton beach toaster oven It’s important to think about both the internal and external size of any toaster oven you’re considering. We recommend these products based on an intensive research process that’s designed to cut through the noise and find the top products in this space.
After the first 40 minutes, we flipped the chicken to find out that parts of the skin on the back got stuck to the baking pan. Then, when we reinsert the pan, the same problem with the breast happened to the back. The tray in the bottom of a Hamilton Beach toaster oven collects crumbs and other food debris to help prevent mess. You should empty this once every week or two depending on how frequently you use the appliance. If you want a simple toaster oven with a couple of nice conveniences, consider this compact model.