I had a (well, several) toasters that didn’t pop so well in my early travels through life and people would go crazy if I did this without unplugging it. Lol. I’m not raking the fork across the elements and the element is off, so…
Anyway, one of those disposable, wooden chop sticks works well for this and keeps people from thinking you either have never heard of electricity or have a death wish.
You can carve a little notch on the end if we’re talking about a toaster oven (like a crochet hook).