Breville Café Series TT33 4 Slice Toaster

 The Breville TT33 4 slice toaster does exactly what you'd expect from a quality toaster - it makes great toast

The greatest pleasure of making my own bread is that I can eat a fresh, crusty slice straight from the oven; or at least when it’s cooled down enough to slice. Because it’s good quality I rarely bother buttering it but just eat it as it comes, particularly if it’s a nice chewy sourdough or a tasty rye bread. Inevitably, however, there are times when the whole loaf doesn’t get eaten straight away, it begins to go a little stale, and then my thoughts turn to toast (unless I’ve made some soup to soften it in). So I wanted a good toaster.  

Like most people I was given a toaster as a Wedding present. It was just a pretty ordinary 2 slice Breville toaster and it worked fine…. Until my kids started growing up, and then it just wasn’t up to the job. Turning 2 slices of bread into toast wasn’t enough, it had to 

·         Toast at least 4 slices at once or somebody would get impatient 

·         Accept both thick and thin slices of bread, to suit everybody’s taste or mood 

·         Toast bread straight from the freezer, for when I forget to get a loaf out on time 

·         Accept large slices without them sticking out the top, and therefore not getting toasted 

·         Have an adjustable browning control to suit number three child who only likes lightly toasted bread 

·         Toast each side of the bread to different levels of brownness – for crumpets and bagels 

·         Ideally it would also look quite nice, because it would sit on my kitchen worktop next to the kettle 

Ok so I wanted my new toaster to do quite a lot of things but none of them seemed at all unusual so I didn’t think I’d have a problem finding one to suit me – and I didn’t, but at a price! I expected to pay maybe £50 but toasters can cost nearly £200, particularly the Dualit ones and they didn’t even get universally good reviews. I carried on looking and briefly considered one with glass sided because I quite liked the idea of watching the toast turn brown, but decided that was a bit of a gimmick that I wasn’t prepared to pay for. I eventually bought the Breville Café Series TT33 4 Slice Toaster. It was a bit more than I’d anticipated paying but having been using it for a year I think it’s been good value for money. As with everything, you tend to get what you pay for. It gets a lot of use so I don’t think it was too much to pay.

Here’s what I think to my Breville TT33 Toaster

Size

It’s quite large for a toaster. 21cm high 25cm deep and 35cm wide. It looks nice, however, so I don’t find the size a problem. It’s a traditional stainless steel colour, feels robust and looks as if it’s made to do the business – toast bread

Number of slices

Not surprisingly for a 4 slice toaster, when I’m preparing breakfast for the whole family I can toast 4 slices of bread at once, but equally if my eldest son is just making a late night snack he can just do 2 at a time. A bit of a grumble is that I would like the slots to take slightly larger slices of bread, but the quality of the toast produced makes up for this small niggle.

Controls

The controls are all at the front of the toaster; rather than on the side, which is the case with some toasters. I find this more convenient.  

There are separate browning controls for each pair of slots so two slices can be toasted to a different level of brownness, if that is what you want. Equally they are variable width slots so that you can toast different thicknesses of bread at the same time. 

Mid cycle cancel button 

There’s a mid cycle cancel button which wasn’t something that I was looking for but which is very useful. I know toast only takes a couple of minutes but sometimes I’m just too impatient to wait for it to popup. With this toaster I can make it popup whenever I want. This is particularly useful if the slice of bread that I’ve put in is too thick for the brownness setting and it starts to burn. I can just pop it out. 

Crumpet function

The crumpet function means that one side of the toaster gets hotter than the other. This is good for crumpets and bagels, but also for my brother in law who like the side of the toast that is buttered to still be white (but warm) whilst the bottom side to be brown. It may be strange but at least this toaster suits him.

Reheat function

This isn’t something I was looking for and can’t say that I’ve used very often but there is a reheat button on this Breville toaster which allows you to reheat cooled toast without burning it. I’m afraid my family are too idle to put cool toast back in the toaster and just eat cold toast. I’m sure some families would find this useful

Defrost button

This is very useful. If you put frozen bread into the toaster this function lengthens the toasting time, to allow for the time taken to defrost the bread. This saves defrosting the bread in the microwave first – assuming that the bread is already sliced. Frozen loaves are very difficult to cut.

Extra-high lift

The slots on the TT33 pop up extra high so that smaller items can be taken out without burning your fingers.

Crumb tray

There’s a removable crumb tray which makes it easy to clean – if anybody ever remembers to check it!

Conclusion

I’m not quite sure why it’s called a Café series toaster, maybe because it looks as if it belongs in a French café, but either way I’m delighted with it. It does everything I want from a toaster including turning bread to a delicious golden brown colour evenly all over. I’m glad I bought it and expect it to last for many years. If you’re thinking of buying a Breville toaster I suggest you try Amazon where the prices are usually well below manufacturers recommended prices.