Oster toaster model TSSTTR6329

This is an ongoing review of the toaster I just bought.  It is an Oster brand model TSSTTR6329 2-slice toaster.  I paid $19.99 at Target on 4 December 2013.  It is the brushed stainless steel exterior model.  It has four settings (toast, bagel, frozen, and warm) as well as a heat dial.  There is also a slide-out crumb tray.  It comes with a 1-year manufacturer's warranty.

First, I like the styling.  The stainless steel look goes nicely with my stainless steel kettles.  The curved body is also sleek looking.

The instruction manual (yes, I actually read the instruction manual for a toaster!) says to run the toaster once without anything in it.  After doing this, I toasted a split whole-wheat English muffin on setting 4.  It crisped the bread nicely but did not brown it much.  This may be because half an English muffin is very thin, so it was quite a distance from the elements.  Next time, I will attempt a higher setting and see what happens.

I reset the toaster to 5 and tried another English muffin.&nbps; The edge was slightly browned, but the texture was still not as crunchy as I like.&nbps; On the third try, I set the toaster to 5½.  This time, I got the crunch I was looking for, but there was a small burn mark on the edge.  Looks like fourth time will be the charm, as tomorrow I will use a setting of 5¼ and report back to you.

Okay, the English muffin comes out nicely with the knob set at around 5¼.  This is the only thing I have toasted in the toaster in the 3 weeks and 3 days I have owned it.  As I typed this, I thought, “How come?”; so I walked away from the computer and put a couple slices of bread into the machine on the same 5¼ setting.

This is a picture of the bread in the toaster.  It is Sprouts market store-brand whole-wheat sandwich bread.  You can see in the picture it is sitting in the toaster so high that it is almost above the toaster slot.

This is also apparent on the finished toast.  You can see the less-done area at the top of the toast.  Personally, I think the toast looks a little overdone at the 5¼ setting.  I wanted to see if there would be a difference between this bread and my home-made bread.

These are slices of my home-made wheat bread.  It is a bit dense; I think I didn't get a proper rise.  Anyway, I put these in the toaster at a setting of 5.  I was happy to see the toaster slots were wide enough.

I almost had to turn the toaster sideways to get these short slices out, but maybe I should have left them in or turned up the heat a bit.  They appear unevenly browned.  The top crust looks almost burned.  However, the bread has an all-over crispiness while staying moist and chewy inside.  The store-bought bread, in contrast, is almost too dry to eat.

It looks like this toaster is going to serve me well, even though it is going to take up very valuable counter space.  We shall just have to see the longevity of it.

Because I lose manuals, I have made a .pdf file of the English portion of the toaster manual and have saved it at this location.  The manual is ©2011 Sunbeam Products, Inc.  Other model numbers listed on the manual are TSSTTR6307, TSSTTR6330, TSSTTRJBP1, and TSSTTRJBG1.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.