We're always ready to put the air fryer to the test to justify its permanent existence on the kitchen counter. At the same time, we know an air fryer isn't a one-stop shop for small kitchen appliances -- without blades or paddles, it can never replace a food processor or mixer.
But what if we compare an air fryer to a toaster? Heated toaster coils transform bread into something hot enough to melt butter, and sturdy enough to cradle a poached egg. While an air fryer doesn't have the obvious mechanics of a toaster for bread transformation, its dry-air environment is at least likely to render sliced bread into something other than its original state.
Certainly, an air fryer can do many of the functions of a toaster oven: baking, broiling and reheating, for example. But what about making actual toast? The answer is maybe, with some caveats. Read on for the benefits and challenges of making toast in the air fryer.
Toast potential: Can an air fryer toast?
Air fryers can ace chicken wings and frozen foods, but what about gentler foods? John Carlsen/CNET
Consider the air fryer: It's an appliance most similar in functionality to a convection oven.
A heating unit -- typically located above the basket or bowl where food would be placed -- is aided and abetted by a motor that rapidly circulates heated air. The moving air means that, at least theoretically, all surfaces of the food you're cooking in the air fryer are being affected by heat simultaneously. The top surface closest to the heating unit will receive more heat. That's why most air fryer preparations suggest a mid-cook flip.
As an entirely dry-heat cooking method, it's the air in the air fryer that makes the exterior of many foods crispy. When already fried foods get reheated, for example, their breaded exteriors become crunchy and hot, as if just pulled from the deep fryer. Since "crunchy" and "hot" are what we typically want from toast (and with bread providing the "breading" in most fried foods), it's logical that sliced bread in the air fryer could be rendered, well, toasty.
What happens when sliced bread goes in the air fryer?
The element that offers the promise of air-frying toast is also its liability: moving air. If you've ever experienced a slice of cheese gone rogue on top of a burger, or shredded cheese that goes everywhere other than where you initially placed it, you know that the air fryer's circulation is actually quite powerful.
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