Bread bin with 3 storage canisters

Four pieces of breakfast in one place

Breakfast is slow because it is scattered. The bread sits on the worktop in its plastic bag, the coffee is in an opened packet in a wall unit, the tea is somewhere else and the sugar is in a jam jar. Four places, four movements, and it always turns out that one of them has run out without your noticing.

This set puts those four things next to each other: one large bread bin and three canisters. The canisters are marked Sugar, Tea and Coffee, and the word Bread runs along the front of the bin. Nothing has to be labelled, and nothing has to be remembered.

Why bread belongs in a bin

Bread brought home in its own bag either dries out or sweats inside it. A closed metal bin is a more predictable environment: dark, and not directly exposed to the warm, dry air of the kitchen. It also hides the pile: what stands on the worktop is a clean shape, not a half-crumpled bag.

The bread bin measures 42.5 × 22.5 × 18.5 cm; a long loaf lies flat in it. If it goes under a wall cabinet, leave room above the 18.5 cm height so the lid can swing up comfortably.

Three canisters, three daily staples

Each canister is 11.5 cm across and 18.5 cm tall. That is a cylinder that takes the contents of an opened packet of coffee, and one you find from the front rather than reaching into the back of a cupboard. All three canisters are the same height and the same width, so in a row they give the worktop one even line rather than a staircase.

Matching canisters replace the four or five half-open bags that used to stand at the edge of the worktop. All three together are barely wider than a chopping board.

Matt metal that does not throw the kitchen light back at you

The set is made from iron with a matt powder-coated finish. That is not lacquer but a hardened powder layer fused onto the metal: it is not glossy, so the kitchen light does not bounce off it.

Powder coating

A powder applied electrostatically and then fused in an oven. It uses no solvent, and it is what gives the surface its matt, even feel.

The lid of the bread bin opens and closes easily, and its handle is a metal bar across the front. You can lift it one-handed, even with a knife in the other. The bar runs the width of the lid, so you can take hold of it anywhere.

How to arrange it on the worktop

Two arrangements work. One: the bread bin at the back against the wall, the three canisters in a row in front of it, ordered left to right by how often you reach for them. The other: the canisters beside the coffee machine, the bread bin next to the chopping board where you slice anyway.

Measure the worktop before choosing a place. There are four pieces, and if they do not get one continuous stretch, what you gain is not order but a more expensive kind of clutter.

A set, not four separate purchases

You can buy a bread bin and storage jars separately, but then four heights, four levels of gloss and four logos end up on the worktop. A set settles that question: the proportions, the surface and the lettering of the four pieces belong together, and that is what makes a worktop calm, not simply having fewer things on it.

Within the Fashion by Berlinger Haus kitchen range the same restrained design language runs through everything, from the small appliances to the pans: matt surfaces, metal detailing, handwritten lettering. If you already own something from the range, these four pieces will not sit oddly beside it.

Use and care

Put bread in only once it has cooled, because warm bread gives off moisture and the inside of the bin mists up. The same goes for the canisters: keep coffee, tea and sugar dry, and if anything gets damp, wipe it out before refilling.

Crumbs decide how pleasant the inside of the bin stays. Once a week, turn the bin over above the bin and it is dealt with; skip it, and old crumbs start to give new bread their smell.

• Wipe the inside and outside with a damp cloth, then dry them off.
• Do not use scouring agents or a metal scourer, which scratch the powder coating.
• Shake the crumbs out of the bread bin once a week.
• Do not put the canisters in a dishwasher; wash them by hand and dry them fully.
• Put bread in only once it has cooled, so the bin does not mist up.
• Do not stand the set directly above a hob or an oven.

Which kitchen it suits

It is also the kind of gift that needs no sizing: whatever the kitchen, the four pieces still match each other, and their lettering says what goes inside.

Frequently asked questions

Technical data