Best Toaster Oven for Baking (updated for 2021)

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Countertop toaster ovens are great – they’re small and energy efficient which means they take up minimal space, use up to half as little energy as a conventional oven, they shorten cooking times, and they don’t need preheating, so you can get your food that much quicker.  

They can replace your conventional oven and air fryer all together – and they will certainly replace your toaster!.

However, they’re not just for toasting bread and making pizza – you can bake anything in your toaster oven that you can bake in a regular oven, so long as it fits.  

If You’re in a Hurry – My Tops Picks at a Glance

You can bake everything from your traditional victoria sponge cake, to chocolate brownies, to choc chip cookies, to homemade bread. 

Read on to find out our top recommendations, why we chose them and then some frequently asked questions (within our buyers guide below).

Best Toaster Oven for Baking – Reviews

1. Breville BOV450XL Mini Smart Oven with Element IQ​

The stand out feature of this toaster oven is the heating element.  The Smart Element IQ feature transfers heat intelligently across 4 quartz heating elements for precise and stable heat exactly where you want it.  

The results speak for themselves!

Operating at a whopping 1800 watts, the preheat is almost instantaneous – great when you’ve got hungry tummies to feed!

The other thing we love about this toaster oven is the different settings.  A typical toaster has just 3 settings: bake, broil and toast. But this baby has 8 functions: bagel, toast, bake, broil, pizza, roast, cookies and reheat.  

Perfect for making batches of cookies for your brood – you can expect your cookie making to be fool proof for that melt in the mouth result.

It’s easy to use, besides the darkness and number of slices settings for toast, you can set the temperature and the timer, and for the 8 functions mentioned above simply turn the dial. 

With regards to setting the temperature, the machine lets you switch between degrees centigrade and degrees fahrenheit – so you can easily follow any recipe you want to use.

You don’t always need to do that though – the machine can calculate the correct time and temperature for you, you just tweak it for various recipes as you see fit.

That’s not the end of its ease of use though – the oven lights up orange when it’s preheating, so you can tell when it’s reached the required temperature, and it lights up blue once cooking is complete, so you can see straight away when your bakes are ready for the cooling rack.

Despite having “mini” in its title, you can fit some good sized baking pans in there – here are the maximum pan sizes that will fit:

• 7 ½” x 11” baking pan no handles
• 9” square / round baking pan
• 6 cup muffin tin
• 9” loaf pan
• Up to 11” pie plate

You could even cook a birthday cake in there – or if you’re happy to bake a tiered cake one layer at a time you could do that too.

Its constructed form brushed stainless steel for that coveted stylish look, and the walls on the inside of the oven feature a non-stick coating for easy cleaning.

Pros

• Compact, fits easily onto your kitchen counter, taking little space
• Super fast heating
• Precise and stable transfer of heat
• Easy to use
• Easy to clean

Cons

• Warranty is only for 1 year

2. BLACK&DECKER Countertop Convection Toaster Oven​

What we really love about this one is the convection heating fan which circulates hot air throughout the oven for fast, and even baking.  

The 1500 watts make for quick preheating followed by optimized heat circulation for better consistency in your bakes.  In fact it’s engineered to cook your pizza 20% faster than by using other methods.

Despite its sleek and compact appearance, it has an extra deep, slightly curved interior, you can fit a 12 inch pizza or a standard 9 by 11 inch bake pan.  

This space is also helped by the inclusion of a dual position rack, so when you’re not making your big cakes, you could have 2 full trays of toast.

It’s super easy to use – in addition to digital controls for time and temperature (up to a maximum of 400 degrees), you’ve got 8 function settings: bake, broil, toast, bagel, pizza, frozen snacks, potatoes, and cookies.

If you’ve got a tendency to forget that you’ve got food in the oven, you may make use of its 120 minute automatic turnoff feature.

It’s made from stainless steel for that super stylish look, and a non stick interior to make clean up a breeze.

It comes with a bake pan, a broil rack, and a crumb tray.

Pros

• Convection oven for even heat and even baking
• Dual position rack to fit your cake pan
• 8 function settings, including pizza, cookies, and frozen snacks
• Automatic turnoff feature, for safety
• Also available with 3 rack positions (for extra cookies!)

Cons

• The digital display is not back lit

3. Oster Toaster Oven | Digital Convection Oven​

We love this toaster oven for its convection technology and wide temperature range (150 to 450 degrees Fahrenheit) which lets you cook with the convenience of a built-in oven.  

The convection oven setting means hot air circulates fast, for flakier crusts, crispier edges, and even browning in less time.  It features a powerful wattage, coming in at 1300 watts.

Its large interior capacity and dual position racks mean you can fit in all manner of pans and tins, going up to 12 inches in width and can fit a standard size cake tin.

It’s easy to use with a digital control panel that lets you turn time and temperature up and down, and features 7 function settings to take the guesswork out of your cooking: toast, bake, convection bake, broil, warm, defrost, and pizza.

We also like that it has an interior light, so you can see how your bakes are doing without letting the hot air out by opening the door.

It includes a baking pan and a crumb tray – all easy to clean.

Pros

• Convection oven for even heating and baking
• Large interior capacity, including width
• 7 function settings including convection bake and pizza
• Interior light

Cons

• No automatic shutoff safety feature

4. Panasonic FlashXpress Compact Toaster Oven with Double Infrared Heating​

This may not be the biggest toaster oven out there but it’s certainly the fastest – great for people who are always in a rush with too little time on their hands!

Its heating elements are double infrared heating high efficiency quartz and ceramic, and they’re positioned in the front and back to evenly toast, bake, brown and reheat your food up to 40% faster.  

You’ll never need to preheat the oven – it will work straight away.  It will even cook food from frozen!

Although it’s on the smaller side of the spectrum, you could still fit a 9 inch pizza in there.

We love how the see-through door is connected to the baking rack so you can smoothly and safely pull the rack toward you as the door is opened.

Although the digital control panel looks a little over complicated at first glance, you will find some of its features quite handy.  

Another feature we particularly like is how the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit is shown right along the degrees centigrade – great if you’re cooking from a British recipe!

This machine is particularly good for doing your waffles, and hot fresh breads.

Pros

• Double infrared heating to heat your food 40% faster
• Can cook from frozen
• Handy temperature display
• Safe door opening mechanism

Cons

• Not big enough to fit a 12 inch pizza
• Not a convection oven

5. Hamilton Beach 6-Slice Countertop Toaster Oven​

If you’re looking for a budget buy, this is the toaster oven to get!

The most striking feature of this toaster oven is its roll top door – not only does it look super cool, but this roll top door is actually a great safety feature.  

Although you can see right into the oven, sometimes when baking you want to check the texture of your bakes, and this roll top door allows you to, safely, do just that.  

We also love how you can simply sprinkle extra ingredients on your pizza after you’ve started the baking

It’s a nice size too, it can fit up to 6 slices of toast, or a 12 inches pizza, or a 9 inches by 11 inches bake pan.  It features 2 rack positions to give you that extra bit of space to fit your 12 inch cake pan.

It features 3 settings: toast, bake, and broil.  You can also adjust the temperature and timer as you please.  

The roll top door is not it’s only safety feature note.  It also has a 60 minute automatic shutoff, which is great if you get distracted from your baking and forget you’ve got food on.  If you did want to cook something for over an hour though, there’s an optional stay-on setting.

It also comes with a removable crumb tray for easy cleaning.

Pros

• Affordability
• Big enough to fit a 12 inch cake pan
• Roll top to check on food whilst baking
• Automatic shut off
• Comes with a removable crumb tray

Cons

• One of the more basic toaster ovens out there

Best Toaster Oven for Baking – Buyers Guide

When choosing your toaster oven, your first consideration should be what are you going to cook in it.  

The average toaster oven has 3 settings, toast, bake and broil.  However there are toaster ovens with a lot more settings for specific baked goods, with pizza being a hot favourite in the toaster oven.  

NOTE: All our top 5 products can cook a thin crust or deep pan pizza for you.

Another popular setting in toaster ovens is cookies, our number 1 and our number 2 both have this treasured feature.

Cooking muffins or large cakes is another matter again however.  If you want to cook cakes and muffins, you would be best advised to purchase a toaster oven that features convection heating.  

This is because convection ovens will distribute heat more evenly across the oven, resulting in a better, more even bake.  Our number 2 and number 3 each have this feature.

The next consideration is size – in this case size does matter.  Your countertop toaster ovens are designed to be compact, so understandably you will not fit the same volume of food in your toaster oven than you would a larger built-in oven.  But who fills their built-in oven anyway? 

The majority of toaster ovens will fit a roast chicken or a 9 inch pizza.  Some will fit a 12 inch pizza, our number 2, 3 and 5 can fit this width.

Another factor that may affect your choice is whether the toaster oven has dual, triple, or adjustable shelving, so you could make 2 small trays of cookies one day, or a large traybake cake the next.

You’ll want a machine that’s easy to use.  Every toaster oven generally lets you set time and temperature but where they really come into their own is when you start looking into function settings – you just select which type of food you want to cook and the machine takes care of all that nasty guess work for you.  

All our top 5 products feature easy to use control panels/dials and come with user manuals.

The next thing you might want to think about is how you can check on your food whilst it’s cooking.  All toaster ovens have a see through door, so normally you can watch your cookies grow and your muffins rise without opening the door and loosing all that lovely heat.  

However only some toaster ovens will have a backlight, so that’s one thing to watch out for.

If you wanted to check on the texture of your food without having to switch the oven off, there is a way to do this with our number 5, with its roll top door.

Toaster ovens tend to be rather uniform in appearance, usually being made with stainless steel, but with non stick interiors for easy cleaning.