Thursday 9 January 2014

Say Cheese!




Dear Breville,

When I moved house in August, I finally gave in. I threw away our much-loved Breville sandwich toaster (mostly under duress from my husband). Ok, so the words he used were “filthy” and “it's a wonder we don't all come down with food poisoning”. I did try to convince him that the condition of the toaster added to the flavour of the toasties. But he's a modern man and didn't quite see it that way.

I then went to the shop (Argos, not an experience I'll repeat in a hurry) and bought a new Breville sandwich toaster. A shiny, new black 2 slice machine, complete with absolutely no crispy cheese. I'm afraid the new toaster has been a complete disappointment however. It's impossible to make a cheese toastie that lives up to my expectations with the machine. Here are the issues:

1. The toaster doesn't hinge wide enough to fit two slices of standard bread and cheese in. This means that the uncooked sandwich is pushed forward too far in the machine, leaving the front portion of the sandwich untoasted. Is there an ultimate bread you can recommend to fit in your toaster?

2. No matter what I do, the melted cheese always oozes out of the sandwich at the back and onto the work surface. This leaves 2 slices of bread with a hint of cheese in, and half a bag of melted Cathedral City to clear up. Are my toasting techniques wrong? Should I be propping up the toaster in some way to ensure that I keep my cheese (at a fiver for 500g, it's not cheap)?

3. After consumption of the inadequate toasted sandwich, cleaning the machine is nigh on impossible. As much as I like the crispy cheese residue and slime, as previously discussed, my husband is not so keen. How do you get the machine clean? I'm close to throwing caution to the wind and putting it in the dishwasher. I doubt this will do the electrics much good though.

Your help would be much appreciated,

Kind regards,


Sally