The State of Toast

Here’s a quick update on the toaster. After being back-ordered for a bit, it finally arrived. It made our aging toaster look small by comparison, but it didn’t exactly dwarf it. First things first, of course…it had to be tested. In go a few slices of bread. You could feel the tension in the air as well as the aroma of drying bread. The bread popped out. And…what a disappointment. Oh, the bread got toasted alright, but it was incredibly uneven. One side was lightly toasted, while the other was on the dark side of medium. And even on a side the toasting was uneven, with one edge noticeably lighter than the rest of the surface.

Sadly, the online reviews on just about every toaster seem to be true: there are no affordable toasters that toast evenly. Frankly, I’m amazed. This is a device with but one purpose, and manufacturers seem incapable of making a machine that, in the past, could be relied upon to crisp and brown slices of bread. Dark days. Dark days, indeed (but only on one side of the bread, the other side is sort of a latte color).

Suffice it to say, this dasher of all optimistic hope is going back to the store for a refund.