Isn’t it annoying? You are waiting for your toast to pop up but instead, it is stuck in the toaster waiting to be “rescued”. I know that the problem probably lies with me because I squeezed in a bread that is a little too thick. But sometimes, even the bread with the standard thickness gets stuck too for whatever reason. Maybe it somehow leaned too much to one side and hence, gets stuck in between the heating elements.
I’m sure all of us have experienced this ‘bread gets stuck in the toaster’ situation before. And when we are in a rush, it is so tempting to just grab the nearest thing that can fit between the slots to get the bread out. This almost always happens to be the butter knife but we all know we can’t use that to dip into the toaster. I tried that once before I know better and it created sparks that made me fling the knife off my hand. Well, a good lesson learned. Luckily, it didn’t give me an electric shock.
So, no metal knife and fork to retrieve a stuck bread out of a toaster, please. Use the right tool for it.
How To Get Stuck Toast Out Of A Toaster
The best way on how to get a piece of stuck bread out of a toaster is to use wooden tongs. There are toaster tongs that are specifically designed to retrieve toasts. especially smaller pieces that sit inside the slots and difficult to access with your own hands.
However, when you use the tongs, you will need to be careful not to damage the heating elements. If you do, the part that is damaged will not heat up anymore. Also, get tongs that are longer because if it is too short, the heat from the toaster will be uncomfortable on your hands. I found that out after I bought the wooden tongs thinking I don’t need long ones because my toaster slots aren’t that deep. But now, I think longer ones are better, especially if you have a really deep toaster and you are too impatient to wait for
the toaster to cool down before you attempt a retrieval.
Side Loading Toaster
This seems like a really great idea if you want to get rid of the stuck bread problem once and for all. Get a side loading toaster. In fact, I didn’t know such a toaster exists until I was searching for the toaster tongs. It just came up during my search because it is kind of related, I guess. No more stuck bread in the toaster with this because you are not limited by the narrow width of the slots of a top loading toaster anymore.
There are not many models of this type of toaster for you to choose from but the Oda Kitchen side loading toaster has a pretty good rating on Amazon at the time of writing. How it works is that you load your bread onto a rack and slide it into the toaster through the side. So, this allows you to toasts all sorts of bread – thick, thin, long or short. You can also warm croissants and pastries inside the toaster which is an improvement from using a warming rack the way the Russell Hobs toaster does.
The Oda Kitchen side loading toaster also has a frozen and reheat function. But it misses out on the bagel function which is a minor drawback. A similar toaster by a different brand is the Seren side loading toaster. It works using the same concept but the customer reviews for Oda Kitchen are more and it seems to be the more popular buy on Amazon at the time of writing.
Would You Buy A Side Loading Toaster?
If your bread gets stuck in your toaster all the time, perhaps it is time for a change. I think a side loading toaster is practical for people who eat all sorts of bread at home. Maybe different family members have different tastes and eat different types of bread. Hence, having a toaster that can accommodate all of them is worth a serious consideration.
On top of that, you can make sandwiches and warm food such as cheese sticks and leftover pizzas. So, it is much more versatile than a traditional toaster which is a great plus. With a sliding toasting rack, clean-up is simple and the toaster is also cleaner. For top-loading toasters, cheese and other foodstuff tend to fall onto the wires and heating elements and get stuck there with no way to clean them up. If you have bread stuck in the toaster, you can bet pieces of it will get stuck to the insides too and over time, gunk will accumulate. I think you will have a much better chance of avoiding this problem with a side loading toaster.
However, I can also see a major drawback with this kind of toaster. Although it is a slim toaster that looks compact, you need to allocate space at the side for the toasting rack to slide in and out. You don’t need that for a top loading toaster. So, it is not necessarily a space-saving compact toaster as it needs more space than it looks.
Overall, I do think a side loading toaster is a good concept. It is even better than the concept of a transparent toaster. After all, a Lift & Look function like those found in a Breville toaster can replace the need for a transparent glass toaster. But no features in a top loading model can help you when your bread gets stuck in the toaster. And it can happen even for expensive toasters. A side loading model solves this problem once and for all and with the flexibility to toast all kinds of bread and warm certain food. It might even be able to take over some of the tasks of a toaster oven.
So, what do you think? Would you buy a side loading toaster or is it too different than what you are used to?