BALMUDA The Toaster | Steam Oven Toaster | 5 Cooking Modes - Sandwich Bread, Artisan Bread, Pizza, Pastry, Oven | Compact Design | Baking Pan | K01M-KG | Black | US Version

Product Information

High-temperature toasting ensures a crisp and delicious surface while preserving the bread’s interior elasticity. Even bakery bread with its high moisture content takes on a toasty brown hue, just as if it had been dry-fried by a chef in a heavy pan. Select this mode to enjoy the texture and aroma of bread to its fullest. Toward the end of the cycle, the steam stops and there's a burst of power to the heating elements, giving the bread a last-moment nudge toward toasty perfection.

I rifled through the manual then asked my editor: "We aren't 220 volts like Korea, are we?" Two lines lower, the cover of the manual read "FOR USE IN KOREA ONLY. NO QUALITY ASSURANCE FOR OVERSEAS USE." Is Balmuda The Toaster the perfect toaster? That depends on you. Is something better because it brings you a bit of joy when you use it or just look at it? The decisive factor is the 5 cc of water poured into the toaster at the beginning. Heating more rapidly than air, a thin layer of steam envelops the bread, lightly toasting its surface, while keeping its inner moisture and flavor from escaping. This mode delivers a delicious contrast between a crisp exterior and a moist interior. Ideal for everyday thin-sliced bread and English muffins from the supermarket. Adjust the timer to obtain the desired level of brownness.Our development team brought some bread along to grill with the meat. For some mysterious reason, the toast came out perfectly: crisp on the outside and moist on the inside. If we could reproduce this, we thought, BALMUDA could make a revolutionary toaster! When the door closes, a flap on top neatly hides the area where water is added. The water travels down a tube in the side of the oven and onto a trough that turns the water into steam. A removable cover over that trough keeps it free of cooking debris, but if water is added when it’s not needed, it’s simple to remove the cover to mop up the water. Precise control of three temperature zones creates superb contrasts of flavor and texture: crisp and savory on the surface, moist and fluffy inside. Two days later, an incredibly heavy box arrived on my doorstep. Nested inside were two more boxes, each one smaller and somehow heavier feeling. Finally, I pulled out a car-battery sized transformer. Intense in its ugliness, it cast the odor of uncured plastic in a five-foot radius around it. A yin to Balmuda's cute yang, it nevertheless got the toaster working.

The taleggio melted through, going ever so slightly bubbly while the top of it started browning. The top edges of the bread took on a lovely dark crispiness. I have to be honest, it really didn’t change much. First, my toast experience was not transcendent. Each slice of toast comes out crisp and golden brown—but only on the top. The bottom was softer and considerably paler, and I wasn’t sure whether that was the toaster’s intention or if there was a problem with the bottom heating unit. The interior of the bread was certainly never dry, but I struggled to parse out any noticeable improvement over toast made in a conventional toaster. Pizza and tuna melts melted beautifully, but not in any way that was superior to the broil setting on my standard toaster. As for pastries: Yes, I will say that it did make croissants feel bakery-fresh. The steam action proved to be great in elevating day-old pastries and staler bread. I'd done some research on toasters a year prior and found the industry to be something of a confused sea: neither the brand nor the amount of money—from dirt-cheap to ludicrous—spent on a toaster guaranteed quality. It's also not a space rife with innovation. The toasters we're using today and the ones manufactured a generation ago are pretty similar, though the ones we're using now tend to be chintzier. The Balmuda is unable to accommodate anything larger than two slices of regular bread. I’m all for small-batch oven dishes, but this is small to a degree that did not feel quite as practical for my purposes. It really is just a luxurious food reheater. Who is this for?TL;DR: The Balmuda is a masterpiece of toaster technology. Unlike other toasters and smart ovens, it sets its sights on doing one thing and doing it perfectly; it even has an oven setting if you need it, elevating this machine from a niche appliance to an essential kitchen tool (that is, if you love toast). Without naming names, the Balmuda makes significantly better toast than the very expensive smart oven I have, and at a fraction of the price. Buttery croissants become warm and crisp without burning. Rolls come out piping hot, even in the center. Heated baguettes remain light and airy on the inside with a wonderfully crisp crust—as delicious as in a restaurant! The three essential elements of culinary delight. BALMUDA The Toaster uses steam technology and precise temperature control to bring out the best in every kind of bread. Its Oven Mode can also cook other items to perfection. We toasted every bread-like thing we could find lurking about, both fresh and stale, from bread to English muffins. The result was excellent each time. Because of the toaster’s small size, we could toast a maximum of two standard bread slices or two English muffins (four split halves).