A great cooking companion.
I’ve always liked having an alternate option for cooking. Traditional ovens and stovetops are great, but having a smaller, more compact way to heat up food (that isn’t the microwave) is really great. That’s why I enjoy having a toaster oven in addition to our traditional kitchen appliances. For a while, I had a small toaster oven that took care of most of my needs, but it wasn’t quite big enough for items like pizza. And sometimes, you just don’t want to use the big oven for a quick job. That’s why I like our new Livenza Convection Toaster/Pizza Oven from DeLonghi.
DETAILS
The DeLonghi Livenza Convection Toaster Oven is an advanced cooking system that allows you to grill, bake, roast, or broil your food to perfection. It’s a compact oven that will save space for you, but still be large enough for any type of food you want to cook. The oven features an innovative heating system that maintains consistent heat with insulated construction and a double glass door. It will cook items 40% faster. There are 9 presets for precision cooking for specific items like pizza or cookies. The interior is nonstick for easy cleanup and it has easy to use electronic controls.
SPECS
- Capacity: 864 cubic inches
- 1800 watts
- Adjustable racks
- Removable drip tray
- LCD display
- Maximum temperature: 450º F
USER EXPERIENCE
I have to admit that when it arrived I wasn’t sure how much different this oven would be from our other one. I’d never had a DeLonghi brand kitchen appliance and I wasn’t really familiar with the brand. From the beginning, I was impressed with it. For starters, it looks like a professional piece of kitchen equipment. The exterior is stainless steel, which matches our stove/oven, dishwasher and a few other appliances in our kitchen. Second, this oven is much larger than our older one. The older one could how a few slices of bread. This one can cook a 10-inch pizza. With that in mind, you need to plan a place for your toaster oven to reside because it does take up a lot of counter space.
This oven is powerful enough to broil, bake, or even grill food items. Getting started with it is very easy. Once you unbox it, you need to install the drip pan and the wire rack. The wire rack is meant to be moved depending on what you are cooking. For example, the manual says to use it in position 1 (the lowest placement) for cooking a frozen pizza. After you install those two accessories, you will turn the oven to ‘bake’ and set the temp to 450º. Set the timer to 30 minutes. This will cook off any residue the oven has from being a ‘new’ product. It is likely to smell like something is burning (ours smelled a bit like plastic) but this is normal and expected. The manual suggests allowing 30 minutes after this initial cooking cycle for the oven to cool down completely before cooking something. This timing might vary slightly. Our oven cooled down in about 20-25 minutes.
The first thing we decided to cook in the oven was a small frozen pizza. We had never had the opportunity to cook a pizza in a toaster oven before so this was a novelty. The oven actually has a notch designed in the back of the oven so that round pizza will fit into it. The oven comes with a pizza pan that you can use for cooking. It fits 10-inch pizzas perfectly. Once you place the pizza in the oven you will tap on the snowflake button to indicate that it’s a frozen item and then select ‘pizza’ on the top knob. The oven has an automatic timer set for that specific item so all you have to do is tap the start/stop button to get cooking!
I ran into a small issue when I first started trying to use the oven. I had it plugged into a power strip and it kept overloading the surge protector. I eventually plugged it directly into the wall and didn’t have any issues with the oven staying on. I would recommend that you plug this directly into the wall rather than other methods of power.
CONCLUSION
This is a very impressive kitchen device. I really fell in love with it after the pizza came out perfect. I’m eager to use the oven as the holiday season approaches. I think it will come in very handy.
For more information, visit delonghi.com.
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