I was skeptical about the claims made by Breville about its Smart Oven Air counter top cooker – until I tried it out. This is not, as I first thought, just a Toaster Oven on steroids. It’s a real oven that plugs into plain old 110-120 volt house current and features sophisticated technology…
The Breville Smart Oven Air: Go ahead and use your fave casserole dish or Dutch
Oven. The Oven does the rest. We haven’t used our conventional
oven since the Breville appliance came into our house…
The Smart Oven Air is – to put it as simply as possible – big enough to bake a 12 in. / 30 cm Pizza, or roast a 14 lb. / 6.4 kg Turkey or Capon. And it does so in jig time compared to a conventional oven, using far less electricity.
Advanced technology…
The Smart Oven Air employs 6 quartz heating elements arrayed in such as way that they can be controlled together or separately to put the heat were you need it. And those elements heat up fast! Not as fast as the instant heat you get from gas, but a much faster pre-heat than conventional electric ovens. Add to that Breville’s Smart Convection with a two-speed fan and over a dozen thoughtfully developed cooking pre-sets and you have an appliance that anyone can use with confidence, no matter how tech-phobic they may think they are. Of course, if you want to, you can take full control of the Oven in Manual mode via the large Time and Temp selector dials and Convection control buttons.
The list of included accessories is pretty much complete: Pizza Pan, Oven Racks (x2), Broiling Rack and Enamel Roasting Pan, and Mesh Basket Rack for dehydrating and air frying.
Bang-on pre-sets…
I’ve always been a little suspicious of appliance pre-sets, which are supposed to automate the cooking of various foods so you don’t have to do the minutes-per-pound / kilo math, or keep an eye on the clock to ensure that dinner doesn’t burn. Up to now, I’ve found that pre-sets usually don’t produce food the way I want it to come out, and I’ve resorted to ‘manual’ mode when setting time, temperature and convection functions. But The Breville Smart Oven Air has made a convert of me.
You can choose from 13 pre-sets including: Toast, Bagel, Broil, Bake, Roast, Warm, Pizza, Proof, Air Fry, Reheat, Cookies, Slow Cook and Dehydrate. You read right. You can air fry with the Smart Oven Air! And your foods come out crispy and delicious, thanks to that Super Convection technology. And, if you love to bake yeast-leavened breads, there’s even a ‘Proof’ setting to raise your dough safely in record time.
What I’ve tried…
My first effort with the Smart Oven was Roast Chicken Breasts. I used the Roast pre-set and let ‘er rip. And the Chicken came out perfect. Sister Erin loves deep fried stuff, and she tried several different foods in Air Fry mode, including Onion Rings and Fries. They came out crisp on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. You just can’t get that kind of finish on ‘fried’ foods in a conventional oven. I’m planning to see what the Smart Oven can do when it comes to resurrecting leftover Fries that have been in the fridge for a day. This just might be the first viable technique for saving left-for-dead fries from a trip to the waste bin…
My biggest show so far has been a scratch Pizza, made in the Oven’s own non-stick Pizza pan. I made the dough like I always do and layered-on the usual toppings. And committed my creation to the Smart Oven using the Pizza pre-set.
“If this thing can turn out a properly baked Pizza – crispy on the bottom and bubbly on the top – I’ll really be impressed,” I said out loud to myself as I pressed the Start button.
Fourteen minutes later, the Oven beeped its ‘Done’ sequence and I cautiously opened the door. The Pizza looked great. The bottom of the crust was just right. The Cheese on top was bubbly with just a few golden brown caramelized spots for show. Cutting into it, I noted that the top of the crust, in contact with the sauce, was not the least bit soggy, as so often happens when one goes too heavy on the sauce. And the flavour was magnificent! Just like a Pizza Parlour Pie.
The guys and gals at Breville must have read the engineering paper by Andreas Glatz of the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory and food anthropologist Sergio Grasso of Rome, which finally revealed scientifically why only a proper Pizza oven can bake a proper Pizza. The Smart Oven Pizza pre-set gets the air flow, heat distribution and other elements of the baking process exactly right.
In conclusion…
I love the Breville Smart Oven Air so much I’m keeping it. I’ll save on electricity while minimizing kitchen heat-up and cooking time for virtually everything I want to make. And I now know I can trust Breville’s pre-sets to produce the kind of professional results I want.
Bravo, Breville!
~ Maggie J.