Reliable, dependable, and makes great toast

I spent years in graduate school making do with a five-dollar toaster. After moving into my first home, I decided it was definitely worth the splurge to upgrade to a toaster worthy of my homemade breads. I was given a KitchenAid 2-Slice Toaster as a housewarming gift, and the love affair hasn't stopped since.

The KitchenAid performs all the usual functions of a toaster, with many choices from light to dark, but also features a bagel setting designed to toast the cut side of bagels more thoroughly than the crust, and a "warm" setting to keep your toast warm without turning it into charcoal.

The toaster has a nice solid construction, with heavy-duty metal parts and a well-built crumb tray that slides out, eliminating the mess from trapdoor-style crumb trays found on cheaper toasters.

Since I bake my own bread, I tend to slice it thickly, and it turns out perfectly in the KitchenAid. But beware: if you use store-bought (or other thinly sliced) breads, the extra-wide slots mean that your toast may turn out very light and need an extra toasting since the bread is held further away from the heating elements. But it performs beautifully on bagels, English muffins, and thick slices of bread. Whoever said that man cannot live by bread alone failed to toast it in a KitchenAid toaster!