So at times, cleaning does require a bit of elbow grease and the air fry basket mesh can be fiddly to clean, I’d recommend a brush for this. On the plus side, here’s a handy removable crumb tray that pulls out of the front making it easy to remove crumbs from beneath the element. Generally, the rest of the inside of the oven just requires a quick wipe with a damp cloth to remove any splatters. As directed, I preheated the oven for five minutes on the bake function, then put the muffins in and set the timer for 20 minutes.
A microfiber cloth damp with a mild soap solution did the trick and the outside only needed a quick wipe-down and dry. The oven rack and crumb tray had to be handwashed (easy) while the baking/drip pan and air fryer basket cleaned up in the dishwasher (easier). The Waring – TCO650 Pro Digital Convection Oven is the heaviest toaster oven on our list. Weighing 22.8 pounds, it can cook up to six slices of pizza or a 12-inch pizza at once.
They all produced essentially the same results in density, texture, and color, but the shape of the cupcakes varied. The toast setting works by emitting even heat from the top and bottom of the oven, similar to the way a 2 or 4-slice slot toaster emits heat on two sides of the bread simultaneously. For this setting, we placed the wire racks on the middle level of the toaster ovens. For the five finalists that allowed us to choose a level, we set the toaster ovens to level two. A formidable size, the Cuisinart also boasts a high 1800 watts in order to preheat quickly and cook effectively. The cooking results of the Cuisinart were nearly identical to the Breville.
While this is a seemingly nice feature it doesn’t really solve a problem. Using an air fryer avoids the need for oil when you want to prepare some French fries or a breaded chicken. There is no need to preheat the oven, unless you’re baking cakes, in which case the instruction manual advises preheating for just five minutes in advance. It’s roomy enough to fit a standard-sized cake tin, although we did find our standard muffin trays were too wide for use.
The Cuisinart TOA-60 is no different, providing an excellent experience to its users which keeps them happy with their purchase. The crumb tray is a small, thin, stainless steel sheet that slides out from the bottom of the toaster oven. All of our seven finalists have crumb trays, and we strongly recommend purchasing a toaster oven with one.
The tray is an essential feature because it makes cleaning your toaster oven much easier. When it came to evenly toasting bread, the majority of our finalists were disappointing, including our new finalist, the KitchenAid. Most cuisinart choppers of the toaster ovens produced shading that graduated from top to bottom with the edges of the bread either under- or over-toasted. In our prior testing, only the Oster and the Waring evenly toasted the bread on both sides.
Along with the traditional wire rack, the toaster came with an enamel broiling rack, an enamel baking pan, and a nonstick pizza pan. The remarkable quality of material and craftsmanship is in the price tag. As demonstrated by the Breville’s price tag, these luxuries come at a price. I also tried air frying frozen breaded fish fillets which is usually my preferred way of cooking these.
Breville has also updated the model we reviewed and now has 12 instead of 10 programmed functions. The Cuisinart ups the number of functions to 15, including a “speed convection” function and an innovative “dual cook” function. The dual cook function allows you to program two modes of cooking — for example, slow-cooking followed by browning — for two different times. In addition, with a new technology developed by Breville called Element IQ, there are five independent heating elements that are controlled to accommodate whatever you are cooking.