Crispafier?
As we all know, the downside of microwaves is soft pie pastry and other such soggyness. If you want crispyness, you can heat up the oven, but it takes too long if you also want a quick result, and as an alternative a toaster oven is not that much better. I've heard of microwave ovens with a browning element (so they're a mix between a microwave and a toaster over, I assume), and though I'm not sure how much better they are, I can't imagine that in the 3 1/2 minutes the pie is being microwaved it wouldn't make the pastry that much crispier.
So I was thinking, could you get oven-style crispy pastry at microwave speed? More specifically, something that could make the pastry on a microwaved pie crispy? No having to wait for a body of air to be heated up or anything like that - just zap and it's crisp. Could you instantly generate a blast of heat and use that? Maybe you quickly expose the surface to flames (if this apparartus was part of the microwave, you wouldn't want your pie still wrapped up in paper-towels!). I don't enough to say what the alternatives are, and whether any of them would be technically feasible, nor whether any of the technical feasible options are practically feasable (eoonomically, safety-wise, etc), but I can tell you that the idea is high up there on my list of useful-devicees-I-would-like, right up there with time-machines and personal jetpacks :-).
I have a browning plate, it does a good job of croissants (however you spell that), no idea about pie pastry though. if you're a student and hungry enough crisp pastry isn't that big an issue
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