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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

Waffle iron. It's a horizontal toaster and applies enough pressure to cook faster. Leaves cool marks.

Just don't burn yourself! (Technically applies to the toaster as well though)

Horizontal sandwich toasters are the popular kind of toasters around my parts. It can make from plain toasts to fully stuffed sandwiches and are not that hard to clean either. I guess Americans will consider them more as a grill though.

In North America you would be more likely to encounter a panini press.

I have seen that fancy horizontal mitsubishi toaster on youtube but never one in store.

Panini presses are less common here only* because they take up more kitchen real estate than a smaller upright appliance and can be reasonably replaced by a skillet. "George Foreman grills" were in vogue for a few years in the 2000s, but I rarely ever see them now.

*Probably also because American bread is awful.

> Probably also because American bread is awful.

Except grilling it is the best thing you can do to oversugared white bread.

I disagree. Throwing them away is the best thing you can do. These things are nasty.

You can buy proper bread here, you just need to stop shopping at the cheapo grocery stores.

We have one too. It's great. You can put anything in them. Super simple, though I suppose it lacks a timer.

Yup. And we put 2 slices of bread with some cheese in between into them all the time. Easy to clean too.

The only thing that seems weird to me is "uncooked bread" reference by GGP - did their 12year old put a dough in the toaster?

Same as a panini press. We've never owned a toaster, which seem weird to some. We use our panini press instead. It's a flat model without any grill marks. Easy to clean and makes perfectly even toast.

Tbf the texture and mouth feel is completely different. I prefer toasted as the bread dries out a bit and gets crispy in the process.

The bread dries out in our press also. You can see steam being released before it gets hot enough to smoke.

One bonus way I like to make it for myself is keep the lid open and only cook one side. This leaves one side moist and other crispy. Downside to toasting one side is it's slower due to no pressure.

Cooking both sides with lid down is quicker, but you have to be careful with the height setting you use. We know how to make it perfectly now, but when we first got it we were making squished cracker-like toast.

It's still different though, enough for me to have a preference. Maybe I didn't or can't articulate that difference or you find it a close enough substitute (or outright preference). Moisture content aside, toasting by warm air and radiant heat and toasting by direct contact with hot metal plates creates enough of a difference for me to have a preference. Minor differences in cooking methodologies can make significant changes to mouth feel and other aspects that factor into taste/flavor.

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