Breville BOV800XL Smart Oven, Brushed Stainless Steel

As a chef, I love all kinds of kitchen gadgets but I ditched my toaster oven in the 90s and never looked back.GIVES YOU A FASTER SPARE OVEN FOR THE HOLIDAYS AND PARTIES OR THE ONLY OVEN YOU WILL NEED:Recently some folks began talking about their toaster ovens and it made sense--they preheat in no time at all so you not only save electricity, but loads of time if you cook a bunch, they cook faster so ditto; I got one and discovered how they have changed in the years since I thought I didn't need one...Some may think they are just for the person who rarely cooks because it's just simpler and easy to clean but for someone who cooks a bunch this is really fantastic because you not only have an extra oven in your house for things like the holidays when you want more than a couple items cooking at once or you want items cooking at variable temps, but it also has a warming setting so that you can pre-make something and keep it warm for your guests or your honey who has to work late at the office and still wants a hot plate. Because it's convection, it also won't dry out the items as a normal oven would when you have it on warm. Even though I cook daily, I find myself now almost exclusively only using this one due to the time savings and the results. Because there is no large family here, it's perfect for almost everything I do and in many cases far better than my fancy-pants old school oven. It heats up so fast I have pretty much broken up with my oven and microwave.PLATE WARMER:And speaking of hot plates, the top of this one is a built-in plate warmer. So, like a restaurant that does not serve you a hot dish on a cold plate since that equals a tepid dish very quickly, put your ceramic or glass plate on top while you cook your dish and your plate is warm to the touch when serving.CONVECTION OVEN:So let's talk convection oven. Regular ovens heat by the heating elements whereas convection ovens also blow the heated air around the oven cabin to result in faster cooking with more even results and a crisp outside while retaining all moisture inside. That's great if you eat meat, but there is no better oven for baking because you get perfect crumb and crust like you just can't get in any regular oven that's not convection. Breads are moist and springy and perfect inside (perfect crumb) with a great crust outside. Cookies are tender yet have a bit of a crisp on the outside. True pro cooking. Because convection ovens also speed up cooking time, I often also lower the recipe directions by 25 degrees. The convection setting is optional. It's default for some cooking settings but if for some reason you want to ride out the baking time old-school cooking, just press the "convection" button and you can turn that on or off.TOASTER HEAVEN:I ditched the toaster. If you take 2 pieces of toast and make a sandwich you get a very dry sandwich. However, you can put the entire sandwich in here and get melty cheese, hot insides, the most perfect crisping on the outside that I have seen in ages, and still not have it dry on the inside. This has become my addiction--fancy Sammys. There is a reason Subway uses toaster ovens for their hot sandwiches. You can't melt cheese in your toaster.AUTOMATIC SHUT-OFF:There are several pre-programmed settings but no matter what you set it on, it turns off automatically for you when it's done. Your regular oven can't do that trick. So if you want to go about your business and go upstairs and vacuum or do laundry and are away from the oven--no worries, when the timer goes off or the automatic cooking time goes off, so does your oven. Of course, if you want more time, you can just hit the start button again if something takes longer to cook but this is a safety and convenience feature.COOKING IQ:If you are not aware of this part, and you are testing your oven temp, you might do it wrong. First, I want to point out that you have to leave an oven thermometer in for 30 minutes to get an accurate reading. As a chef I frequently check my ovens for accuracy both at home and work and this one never fails...always accurate. So back to IQ. What is it? It does things to ensure what you are baking exceeds expectations so if you do your part, you'll get great results. For example, on the toast setting it asks you how many pieces. If you input one you'll get the heating elements just in the center of the oven. Put in 4 and you get the whole oven but it pulses the heat in order to not overdry out your bread while toasting. Really the best toast ever. On toast it does this on the top and bottom of the oven, whereas you can put a bagel or English muffin in on the bagel setting and you get less toasting on the bagel bottom where it's already cooked so it does not dry out. Smart, huh?CELSIUS RECIPE CONVERSION:Set this up wrong and you will always wonder why your oven is the wrong temperature. It has F and C cooking. What's great about that is that you can use any recipe you find online even if it's from another country and written all in Celsius. Push the button and all the temps are C. Push again and back to Fahrenheit . So it's an instant recipe converter. But if you feel your oven is running wrong temp, look for the F after the number and be sure you didn't push the button.FROZEN FOODS BUTTON:Are you cooking from one of the pre-set easy settings but your items is frozen? For example, if you want to pull a bagel out of the freezer to toast it? Just push the "frozen" button first and it automatically warms up the item and adds the extra time to your toaster setting so you don't get crispy outside and frozen middle or undercooked or undertoasted. You can add this to any setting like the pizza setting.RACK PLACEMENT SMARTS:The outside of the oven door tells you where to position the rack for proper cooking. For example, if you are broiling, you will want a different setting than if you are toasting. It is easy to forget this on regular toaster ovens and get poor results because of it. Just look at the small guages on the right of the glass and you will never make a mistake. Top rack height position is for broil, middle rack is for toast, bagel, pizza, and cookie functions. The bottom rack height is for bake, roast, reheat and warm functionsREHEAT FOODS WITHOUT DRYING OUT:Got leftovers but don't want to dry them out while cooking again? You don't have to. Choose the "reheat" setting. It will reheat your foods but will not brown the top since that has already been done.MAGNETIC AUTO-EJECT RACK:Why didn't all oven manufacturers think of that? There are two magnets on the back side of the oven door, when you open the door, the magnets automatically pull the oven rack out for you so you don't have to REACH IN and grab your hot food or cheese toast. Really great if you have kids on the go grabbing something--safety first and no more burns and I usually don't even need an oven mitt if juts grabbing my toast or sandwich.CUSTOMIZED TOAST BROWNING:Pick how many slices and how brown you want your toast and it will automatically return to that setting the next time and display it. Should you vary the number of slices often, just one turn of the dial will give you a new number so it's easy to change that up as you cook. The pulsing ensures you simply can't get better toasting.BAGEL FUNCTION:Top and bottom elements cycle on and off but you'll get a tad more browning on top where the bagel is totally uncooked with a perfectly crisped base where it's already browned. All other toast options are the same as the toast options as far as auto-memory etc.BAKE:It will default for cooking convection 325 for 30 minutes. It should be noted that that's 350 in a regular oven. The hot air circulates the heat so you get faster cooking so adjust all recipes by 25 degrees. You will far prefer the results of convection baking to a regular oven but that is why it defaults to 325 rather than 350. To increase temp or time, just one roll of the top and bottom knob does that. You can also turn off the convection baking if you want. Just push the "convection" button. I never turn that off while in the baking mode. Regular baking can't do what convection can as far as better results.ROAST FUNCTION:Top and bottom elements cycle on and off to get the correct temp overall but middle element is off so as not to dry out. It is suggested the max weight to roast be 4.5 lbs for best results. Also, many like to roast poultry in juices that contain lemon. Citric acid damages broiling pans of toaster ovens so line yours in foil if you use anything with citric acid or lemon juice.BROIL:While the top rack is suggested, this is a guide. You can also brown the tops of casseroles by having the wire rack lower. It still works. You can melt cheese on your sandwiches on broil, or crisp something up. You can even broil seatood, meats, and veggies. On this setting you want to use the broil rack. That's the rack that sits inside the baking pan that came with it. Use them both. It has slats in it but is not as open as your wire rack. This way, melting cheese, oil, etc that you have won't drip onto the base of the oven but air will circulate through those vents in the rack.PIZZA:It does a really great pizza and I highly recommend the pizza stone that's an option for this oven. To use a pizza stone, don't ever wash it. It will wind up getting seasoned (black from cooking on it) in time but the high temp kills off bacteria...always scrape it after use, don't wash a pizza stone. The seasoning will make it non-stick eventually but until then, just throw a little cornstarch on it. You want to heat the pizza stone up WITH the oven. Don't put it in the oven cold with the pizza. It won't work. The point of a pizza stone is to crisp up the crust and so heating it up as you preheat the oven makes it do that. I have a pizza oven so I never thought I'd use my toaster oven for that. I thought I might use it for frozen pizza now and again so I bought the stone. But now I love it! You can put it on the "fresh" setting and use dough or your can put it on the "frozen" setting for store bought frozen pizzas. It asks you the approximate size in order to use it's smart technology to heat perfectly. I do recommend the pizza's suggested temperature of 450 at convection for great results. You can just pop it in and put the size and it will automatically tell you how long it thinks you should cook it at that temp., Of course you can always change that.COOKIE FUNCTION:Use the convection on this one. It comes on as default but you can't get better cookies than your convection oven. It also does perfect biscuits, cinnamon rolls, croissants, etc. You can cook from frozen cookie dough simply by pushing the "frozen" button. I recommend getting some silicone baking sheets. You can cut them to any size you want and then your cookies never stick to the baking pans you use and you need no grease. I use them whether I make cookies in the oven or in the toaster oven but it's nice for the toaster oven since you need small pans and they often are not as well made so you get flawless non-stick from them.EASY CLEAN-UP:The bottom pan pulls out so you don't have to do the cleaning by reaching into the oven. You can also line that with the non-stick foil but I have not found the need to as it cleans up easily. I throw the racks in the dishwasher for anything that drips onto those. You are not supposed to put the broiler pan in the dishwasher though. I handwash the cookie sheet because I want it to build up non-stick seasoning. It may be dishwasher safe though; I just know never to put any cookie pan in the dishwasher if you want it non-stick.KEEP WARM:When I am having a dinner party I use this often. I can bake a loaf of bread or a side dish and have it done while I begin other dishes. I set it in the toaster oven on the warming setting and the heat cycles on and off with convection air That means it does not dry out the dish, but it keeps it hot until I am ready to serve it. I made jalapeño bread for a recent Tex/Mex party and the bread was in there a couple hours until I was ready to serve it. It came out hot and fresh and moist and perfect as though I'd just taken it out of the oven. You never have to worry about perfect timing again. Of course, this also means that you can cook dinner for the kids when your spouse works late, and keep their meal hot until they arrive home and everyone eats happy with hot fresh dinners.That's my recap having been using mine for some time now. I had no idea how toaster ovens had changed and how invaluable one would wind up being to me. Cooking time is reduced considerably as is clean up and during the holidays I have a full extra oven for that casserole so all my foods are timed perfectly no matter what is in the other oven. I thought I'd use it some but I have rarely used my pro full-size oven since and I actually have nearly broken up with my microwave. I can preheat the whole oven in a couple minutes and since it's convection, everything cooks better so I now only use my regular oven for large baking for parties. Everything else is done in this one. Including meals I used to microwave.Easy clean up, great features, this one is simply a winner.

I love this product - it is a pleasure to use, functions beautifully, and is beautifully designed.The other reviewers have already said much of what I would have written. The 'Out of Box Experience' is superb. As another reviewer noted, the packaging is quite a bit like Apple's (see photos) - attractive graphics on an inner box protected in an outer, recyclable box. The oven itself, when compared to the Cuisinart TOB-165 that we have been using (or even the stainless steel TOB-195 model), is like comparing an Apple Mac to a Dell: visually more stylish and appealing, better engineered 'guts', and once operated, functionally very well thought out.A few years ago, our old toaster oven died and we migrated to the Cuisinart which, like this Breville BOV800XL, is a convection oven / toaster / broiler. We liked it so much, that we gifted several more to friends and family. Ah, if only this Breville had ben available then...The Breville is so vastly superior in every way - function, capacity, ease of use, and ease of cleaning. I cannot recommend it highly enough.The timer on the Breville turns the oven off at the end of any kind of cycle as you would expect - toast, bagel, bake, broil, pizza, etc.This is hugely wonderful compared to the Cuisinart unit which only turns itself off after toasting - you have to remember to turn it off when in any other mode. (The Cuisinart's timer is 'dumb' - just a beeper.) Also, each Breville cycle has smart default settings, and can remember your own settings for temperature and time, or slices (toast) and darkness, etc.The BOV800XL accomodates a 13" pizza pan (included). We made two pizzas tonight to test the oven, one fresh (deli) the other frozen. I dialed the 'pizza' setting, dropped the default 450 temperature to 425, accepted convection mode, and accepted the default 12" size for the fresh pizza and pressed the on button. Once preheated, the oven beeped for the pizza to be inserted. At the end of the timed cycle, the oven turned off and beeped again: perfect pizza!I then did a 9" frozen Amy's pizza. Similar procedure as above, but dialed the size knob down to 9" and pressed the 'frozen food' button. Again, perfect at the end of the cycle.Toast setting works great - up to 6 pieces of toast, as does the bagel setting, which toasts the top at a higher temp then the bottom to make the top crispy and the bottom warm but still soft. Frozen waffles come out great - crunchy outside and moist inside, instead of all dried out.For baking, a 13" x 9" baking pan easily fits inside as does, of course, the larger pan that comes with the unit, loaf pans and small muffin pans.The glass door conveniently labels the three rack positions for broil, toast/cookie/bagel/pizza, and bake/roast/reheat/warm.The crystalline-looking heating elements (three on top, two on the bottom) seem to heat faster, and more evenly, than the metallic elements in other counter-top ovens. Depending on the mode/cycle, the oven enables or disables certain elements, and changes the wattage of others.The crumb tray in the front answer another of my big complaints about the Cuininart. No effort to pull the tray out at any time to brush off crumbs, or wash off accidental spills. (The Cuinsart's crumb tray slides out of the rear of that unit, requiring minor gymnastics - enough to put it off until it is really gross.)The stainless finish and assembly is of high quality, and the oversized handle and control knobs give a feel of quality as well (and match current upper to high end major appliances).No doubt I'll have more comments after we use the Breville BOV800XL for a few months, but for now, I can only sing its praises.----------Boring details:Dimension Comparison to Cuisinart TOB-165/195:The Breville being slightly larger permits it to be used for items that otherwise would have to go into a regular oven. The interior of the Breville is 13 1/2" x 11 1/2" x 5" high (to clear the elements), with a curved recess in the back so that a nearly 13" pizza pan fits. The Cuisinart is 11 1/2" x 9 3/4" x 5" which cannot accommodate pizza, nor a 13 x 9 pan and toasts only 4 pieces of bread.The small increase in interior space which results in so much greater versatility is at the expense of only an inch of counter space required. The Breville exterior is roughly 18 1/2" wide x 16" deep x 10 3/4" high compared to the Cuisinart 17 1/2" wide x 14" deep x 10" high.Electrical Notes:As others note, the oven uses a maximum of 1800 watts, which is basically all that a 15 amp circuit has to offer (most home kitchens will have either 15 or 20 amp circuits). So, you shouldn't use other power hungry appliances on the same circuit as the BOV800XL. As noted in the owner's manual, you must have a grounded 3-prong outlet, which any modern home will have. Even though my kitchen is 20 years old, I'm fortunate that the electrician had included three circuits for appliances so no problems here.With regard to those concerned about the short cord: do note that electrical codes require that outlets on kitchen counters be serviced by a minimum of two separate circuits and be no more than 2 feet from one another (4 feet at a corner). Even under older codes that permit outlets up to 6' apart, the 3' cord is adequate.Installation note:This is a countertop oven. When operating, nothing should be within 4" of any side. Because some people are accustomed to GE/Black and Decker toaster ovens that mount under cabinets, do note that that is NOT an option here because of the high heat and clearances required. You really do need to have enough counter space to accommodate the unit.UPDATE November 2014: the door spring broke today, so the door flops open. That mine lasted almost 6 years of daily use is remarkable as I read many reports of other people's springs breaking after 3 or 4 years of use. This is painful to repair...as so many screws have to be removed and contortions with the dangerously sharp metal case performed. Steps can be found online. Heading to a hardware store tomorrow to find a close match to the spring. My old spring broke on BOTH ends. Given that I got 6 years out of the oven, I won't reduce my 5 star review, although I feel that an item this expensive should be easier to repair.