I doubt it's a broken element, but this fix for that pleased me immensely, so here it is. Maybe it's a little dangerous, but I remain unscathed. If you can see where the heating wire is broken, you can push the ends together with a dry chopstick or two, or other non conductive heat resistant things. Do this while the toaster is plugged it and in toasting mode so that when the ends touch each other, a weld occurs. Wearing sneakers and rubber gloves couldn't hurt, nor could doing it while it's plugged in to a GFCI.