Our Favorite Toaster Oven

The big oven is almost always spoken for at our house. Someone’s got a casserole going, or it’s preheating for a sheet of dinner rolls, and meanwhile four kids want toast and one wants a couple of reheated slices of pizza right now. Firing up the full oven to toast bread for the little ones always felt a little ridiculous, especially in July when the kitchen’s already too warm.

The Breville BOV450XL Mini became our answer to all the small jobs. It’s compact enough to live on the counter without eating the whole thing, but it toasts evenly and heats up fast, which means the morning toast line moves without anyone tying up the real oven. For quick after-school snacks and the endless parade of reheats, it’s become the appliance the kids actually know how to use themselves, which is its own kind of miracle.

We compared it against a few bigger toaster ovens and a plain pop-up toaster before deciding. The pop-up couldn’t do the reheating and small-batch baking we wanted, and the larger ovens took up more counter than we could spare with everything else already parked up there. The Breville Mini won on smart sizing — enough capacity for the little stuff, small enough to fit our crowded counter, and even and reliable batch after batch. At $159.95 it’s not the cheapest small oven out there, but the even toasting and the space it saves earned it a permanent home.