Oven!
As I wrote when I first arrived (here), my kitchen was equipped with... a two-burner hot plate. No fridge, no microwave, no oven. I learned through the last three months that actually I can survive without a microwave (a big surprise to myself). But I really missed having an oven. There are so many things that you can make only in an oven (casseroles, lasagna, roasted vegetables and meats, bread, cakes, pies, cookies...)
So to reward myself after finishing the first quarter of school, I went out and bought an oven finally! Now searching for the right oven was quite an event. First of all, toaster ovens aren't really a big thing here. People seem to have a toaster, and either a wall oven or a combination microwave/oven. Like, using the microwave/oven combination seems to be a really acceptable way to bake and roast things. So the selection of toaster ovens is sparse.
I thought about buying a Cuisinart Brick Oven Classic from Amazon.co.uk, but it would have been about $330 after tax and shipping was included (I loved my old Cuisinart convection oven so I was inclined to spring for it). I looked for a Krups toaster oven, Cook's Illustrated #1 rated oven. Surely Krups being a German brand, it should be available, at least from Amazon.de? Well turns out that the Krups oven is only sold in US and Canada! That was a surprise to me - that the US/Cn volume is large enough to support making a line of toasters just for that market.
I then went for a black DeLonghi oven, since the controls felt most solid and looked the nicest. After I took it home (by bus), I found out that the heating elements were practically in the middle of the oven, which made the space to put baking dishes in very narrow. Plus everything inside felt cheap, as in, I was able to dent the baking pan just by pressing my thumb and index finger together. So I took it back to the store (by bus) to return, and then came back with this Tefal.
The nice things about it so far are:
- very spacious, the heating elements are really close to the top and bottom leaving a big cavity in the middle
- 5 rack positions, and the rack is reversible at different heights so there are really 10 total positions.
The not so nice things are:
- the timer goes all the way to zero only some of the time; sometimes it just stops at 5 minutes
- doesn't tell you when it has finished pre-heating
- slow to heat up so toast will turn out dry (not really made for toasting, but learned that if you put in a frozen slice of bread it will turn out well)
- no crumb tray
So yeah, there are a few negatives already, but so happy to have an oven nonetheless!
