Sandwich Makers

A sandwich toaster is an electrical appliance used to toast sandwiches. Ordinary kitchen units generally consist of indented hot plates, clamped together around the sandwich. Usually two sandwiches can be toasted at a time. The plates are heated by electrical coils inside the appliance. more...

Usually the exterior is somewhat separate from these to ensure the outside of the unit does not get too hot. The plates often clamp tightly around the edge of the sandwich, sealing in the filling. The use of a special sandwich toaster seals the edges of the sandwich and places a diagonal line across it, thus solving the problem of content spillage. Typical toasted sandwiches are a grilled cheese sandwich, tuna melt, or patty melt.

The appliance is known by various names around the world, including toasted sandwich maker or jaffle iron in Australia and South Africa, toastie maker in the United Kingdom and New Zealand {sometimes quixie iron or quicksie iron in New Zealand}. Breville, manufacturers of some of the earliest sandwich toasters, is sometimes eponymously.

Toasted sandwiches are also known by various names. They are frequently called toasties in Britain, brevilles or jaffles in Australia (also brevilles in South Africa). Jaffles are so named after the original jaffle iron (U.S. English: "pie iron"), a long-handled hinged iron implement for toasting sandwiches in a campfire. Sandwich toasters are less common in the United States where grilled cheese sandwiches are more popular.

Preparation

The toasted sandwich maker presses the edges of the sandwich together to form a seal during toasting. The filling ends up in a cavity within the bread, making the sandwich convenient to eat, but also rendering the filling extremely hot.

Another type of toasted sandwich is the panini. Panini, which translates to "little breads" in Italian, are sandwiches that are pressed during grilling with a Panini-press sandwich toaster. Panini-presses often produce distinctive parallel grill marks on the sandwich and are able to accommodate sections of bread of varying length, unlike other hinged sandwich toasters which require a standard size of sliced bread.

Read more at Wikipedia.org