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Before the very first toaster became a household phenomenon in home kitchens, the idea of “toasting” bread over an open flame was discovered and thus toast was born. It has never been determined who invented the first toaster but it was General Electric in 1909 that introduced the very first toaster to the market. Since then, the conventional toaster has taken on many shapes and sizes and now there are a myriad of toasters available to the everyday consumer.

The three main types of toasters are pop-up toasters, toaster ovens, and conveyor toasters. Pop-up toasters can be designed for either commercial or residential use. These toasters are made for quickly toasting bread, frozen waffles and other foods evenly. The pop-up toaster models from Toastmaster come with either two or four toasting slots, which cuts down the time it takes to toast your bread. Each of the toasting chambers are equipped with oven guide wires and lowering racks. The bagel and bun toasters have wider slots in the top. These toasters only provide one sided toasting. Toastmaster also has combo toasters that allow the operator to toast bread, Texas toast, and bagels at the same time. These toasters have a front pullout crumb tray that allows easy cleaning. These pop-up toasters have insulated ceramic etched foil heaters are on one or both sides of each toasting chamber, depending upon the model. The HT409 and the HT424 can toast 150 slices of bread and bagels per hour.

Toastmaster HT409

Star-Mar 526TOA

Toaster ovens or red toasters are designed with the idea of toasting a variety of food types other than bread, bagels, etc. These toasters act similar to an oven where the food items are placed on a rack and the food can either be heated from below the rack, above the rack, or both. Star-Max has an oven toaster that stays cool to the touch with its forced convection feature. This increases the productivity of the oven by circulating pre-heated air into the oven chamber. The heating elements are quartz infared and provide consistent heating of products compared to other traditional heating elements. This oven is energy efficient in that it has a power saver switch that reduces electricity consumption by 75%. The oven automatically returns to running on a fourth of its power at the end of the cooking cycle.

The conveyor toaster or a pass through toaster is hands down the fastest type of toaster. These toasters are designed to be in a commercial kitchen where a high volume of toast is necessary for productivity. The conveyor toaster can toast up to on average 350 to 400 slices of bread in one hour. As the name suggests, the conveyor toaster has a conveyor belt that the bread is placed on. The conveyor belt moves the bread through the heating element to be toasted to perfection. The TC17 and TC21 both have a large chamber opening that allows toasting of a variety of products including buns, bagels and muffins. These conveyor toasters are equipped with a loading rack that is angled to continuously feed the product into the toaster with ease. Safety always comes first in any commercial kitchen that is why these models have an auto cool-down feature, which allows the fan inside the toaster to cool the exterior of the toaster when the unit is turned off. The heating elements can be controlled individually for either top or bottom, which also controls the lightness or darkness of the product. The standby feature during inactive hours reduces the energy use.