Toast

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To toast something is to lightly grill or heat it so that the surfaces brown. In English, as a noun, it always refers to a slice of bread that has been toasted.

Toast is the one battleground that even the least fussiest of people will express strong preferences about.


How Well Done?

Preferences range from barely warmed slices of bread to burnt offerings. Great household battles range over what setting to leave the toaster on: invariably, someone forgets to check the setting and then it all starts up again. For what it's worth, in the debate over what colour toast should be, the Oxford English Dictionary defines "Toast colour" as "a light brown"


Toast Racks

The entire continent of North America is mystified by a simple British breakfast table tool: the toast rack. Wouldn't the toast be stone cold by the time you get to butter it? Yes, of course, the Brits would reply. And North America would throw a collective shudder back at them.

North Americans look at a toast rack and see an instrument specifically designed to torture toast and deliver it ice cold. For them, toast has to be buttered the second it leaves the toaster -- a 20 second delay and all is lost; they'll have a look on their faces like their puppy just died. To Brits, a toast rack is an instrument designed to keep pieces of toast separate from each other, so that the pieces of toast will stay hard and crunchy, and not get moist as they would when stacked on top of each other. Which is to say, the way North Americans like toast.


Toast Bread

While any bread can be toasted, there is a general sense that there is a kind of "generic" toast bread out there. It's the thinly pre-sliced, generic supermarket white bread that doesn't require any chewing. It's what most people in North America and Britain buy as regular bread, and sometimes refer to as "toast bread." In Germany, it is called "Toast-Brot." It has a nice square shape that fits perfectly in all toasters, and has the right thickness so that it won't get stuck in pop-up toasters. There are different degrees of thickness,though: some people prefer it sliced more thickly, as in "Texas Toast", others prefer it more thin. One popular brand of toast bread in the UK is called "Warburtons Toastie" and "Warburtons Super Toastie"; you can also get it at some stores in America.

You can actually toast any kind of bread, of course, though French and Italian breads tend to toast up quite brittle. Thicker slices are better toasted under the grill or in a toaster oven. The problem with toaster ovens, though, is that the bread being toasted in them really does seem to need 1 1/2 rounds in them to make a golden-brown piece of toast.



English Toasting Bread (English Muffin Bread)

This is bread that tastes something like what North Americans call an English Muffin, and what Brits just call a muffin. You can buy it in stores or make it yourself. Recipes for making it yourself don't require kneading.

Cooking Tips
Toasted bread can be eaten as is, or can have butter or margarine spread on it. It can also be used as the basis for a sweet, by putting jam or preserves on it. It can also become an instant, savoury meal, by putting peanut butter or melted cheese on it.

Stale bread comes alive when toasted.

History
In the Middle Ages, toasted bread was used as a thickener for sauces.

Literature & Lore
"When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries." -- Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932). The Wind in the Willows (published 1908).

Also called:
Pain grillé (French); Geröstete Brotscheibe, Toast-Brot (German); Pan tostado (Spanish)

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