Hot toast, cold toast,

[torakris]

In the toaster settings thread chrisamirsault asked:

While we're on this very important subject, might I suggest that the bizarre British habit of cooling toast is utterly mad? Can someone from across the pond explain this to me? Of course, moralistic statements about all right-minded, intelligent people preferring cool toast are perfectly acceptable.

I get a little fanatical when it comes to toast.....

If I am buttering it the butter, the butter is slathered on before I can even get teh toast to the counter, I have been known to re-heat the toast if for some reason I missed that crucial buttering window.

Peanut butter can only be applied after the bread has been placed on the counter, in the 3 to 5 second range after removal from the toaster. If it is too hot it will melt too much but if it cools down it will not melt at all.

Jam can only be placed on toast that has been completely cooled, I do not like warm jam!

[snowangel]

Reminds me that I have never understood the idea of a toast rack. I got one for a wedding present, which I used for years on my desk to organize bills and stuff. What's up with a device to make toast go cold?

[mona]

When making toast, I will always let it cool before slathering on the butter. This is because I like a thick, at least a quarter of an inch thick layer of the stuff, so that when bitten into, it leaves interesting toothmarks on the surface. Obviously that's not the only reason...but basically I just don't like melty butter. It's okay on waffles and stuff but not toast.

I also like charred toast.

[Misa]

I use my toaster as more of a "warming" device - I usually am not looking for "toast" so much as "crisp, warm bread." However, if anything besides butter goes on it, I do make toast.

And I need it to still be warm when I put my toppings on. With PB, I give it a couple of seconds to cool down, but I still want it somewhat warm.

[britcook]

While we're on this very important subject, might I suggest that the bizarre British habit of cooling toast is utterly mad? Can someone from across the pond explain this to me?

←

Those of us who live here find it slightly bizarre too, the use of the toast rack which seems expressly designed to cool the toast as rapidly as possible. I believe, with no evidence to back it up, that the breakfast toast was served early in the meal so that you could have it with your bacon and eggs if you so wished. The toast rack is just a result of form over function, looks nice but useless.

On a general level it depends if you like your butter to melt into the toast, giving that slightly soggy, supersaturated effect or you prefer to retain the basic crunch and therefore apply butter when it is cooler. When eating breakfast out I just wish we had a choice - as you say it's always cold.

[lexy]

Well, maybe I'm weird, but I like my toast slightly cooled (not stone cold though). I like the crunch and flavour of toast, but unless I'm spreading butter onto it, I find that toast straight out of the toaster is too hot to really taste properly. My parents are British, and we all eat toast this way, but I'd never thought it odd before.

[Jonathan Day]

John Thorne, in Pot on the Fire, writes

You don't have to immerse yourself all that far in the literature to become aware that the difficulty of making crisp toast with British bread created a new breed of English eccentric: the toast bore.

Thorne has it exactly right, as far as I am concerned: good toast is crisp, cooked all the way through without being burnt; for me this is more important than it being hot. Soggy toast, no matter how warm, isn't worth much. Crisp toast is a different substance to bread.

If you toast over a fire, using a toasting fork, the product you get is crisp. Electric toasters don't do this well; most seem to brown the toast a bit and steam it. I find that the best approximation I can get to proper toast with a toaster is made by putting in the bread at a low setting and running it through several times until it is crisp all the way through. The toasting gadget on an Aga cooker (which holds the bread in a kind of cage) works reasonably well, though not as well as an open fire.

So the point of British toast racks is to hold the bread while it crisps. You can also use toast racks to hold unpaid bills, while they crisp up and become even more unpaid.

[bainesy]

Cold buttered toast for breakfast, hot buttered toast for tea.

Toast rack prevents the toast going soggy as it cools (if you lie hot toast down on a plate, or slices on top of each other they will produce steam). For those of us too stingy to invest in a toast rack there is the daily ritual of getting slices to balance against each other (like a house of cards).

[helenjp]

How thick is American toast? Cold thick toast is just shoe-leather, while cool thin toast is pretty good.

Hot toast is fine too, but not soggy hot toast that has sat on a plate for more than a few seconds...

[jgarner53]

soggy toast bad

crispy warm toast good

which probably explains why I gobble up my toast so quickly and order an English muffin or something besides toast if we're out at breakfast.

cold, soggy toast really bad

[fou de Bassan]

hot toast definitely. Immediately spread with paper thin slices of cold butter so the toast doesn't get smooshed. No smooshed toast.

[Hest88]

I don't understand cold toast. It often gets soggy, and when it isn't soggy it's just...cold. Why not just eat crackers then?

[sabiha]

I don't like cold or soggy toast and it has to be made in a proper grill, toast made in a toaster just doesnt taste right and it HAS to be butter, no margarine please. I also have a habit of putting the toast back in the grill for a few seconds after i butter it so it goes all nice and bubbly

[petite tête de chou]

I can appreciate both. In one hand you have a slice of hot, crisp, wonderful smelling toast and in the other hand you have a slice of cool, chewy, slightly charred toast. Butter is completely optional. I like warm, melting butter but there's something to be said for gobs of barely melted, oozing butter too. It's all good to me. Mmmm. Toast.

[torakris]

How thick is American toast? Cold thick toast is just shoe-leather, while cool thin toast is pretty good.

←

Helen、the typical toast in the US is a similar thickness to the Japanese ８枚　bread.

[peppyre]

Funny, I never thought of this as an odd british quirk. My grandma used to always let the toast get cold before buttering, that way you get that wonderfully thick layer of butter on the top of the bread. I haven't had that in years, not because I don't like cold toast but because I don't want my cholesterol levels to reach a point of no return.

[racheld]

After a lifetime of Jane Austen and Mrs. Miniver and Trollope and Dickens, I was delighted to descend every morning at our hotels in England to find a toastrack on every table, along with a steaming teapot and a coffee press.

I didn't care that it was cold. It was crisp and sliced in triangles and sitting in a lovely silver rack and I was in ENGLAND. It added to the experience, deepened it somehow, in an exponential way. I had heard of the enormous, delightful Brit breakfasts, and they certainly were. I've just never been a hot-food-early person, so while my tablemates stocked up on big sausages and rolls and tomatoes and beans and deep-fried eggs, I breakfasted happily on a bowl of cereal or fruit, and several half-slices of that wonderful, crisp, long-anticipated cold toast. From a silver rack.

[cathrynapple]

i like slices of french bread, toasted till golden and buttered while very hot. then smeared with a poached or overeasy egg.

[Jinmyo]

... and it HAS to be butter, no margarine please...

Margarine?

Egad. It's been decades since the possibility of such an atrocity has occured for me.

I don't know if I'll be able to go to sleep tonight.

[Carlovski]

It's all about the crispiness.

Even Delia, the high priestess of British Food/football lout realises the necessity of not allowing toast to wallow in it's own steam.

I don't actually own a toast rack - what I tend to do though is place the toast in the house of cards formation balanced over the toaster (quite tricky...) to allow it to release it's stema without overly cooling.

The important thing is to ensure you get the correct rasping sound as you butter - it should be loud enough to be almost painful on a Sunday morning.

[sabiha]

... and it HAS to be butter, no margarine please...

Margarine?

Egad. It's been decades since the possibility of such an atrocity has occured for me.

I don't know if I'll be able to go to sleep tonight.

←

Oh dear Unfortunately I have heard of people who still do put margarine on their toast, how sad it is too

[Bernaise]

Jeeeez, I feel like I'm outing myself here but frankly I love toast so much it's become a forbidden food. I once ate 8 slices of well buttered english muffin style bread toasted to golden perfection.

And here's the worst bit - I am an unrepentent cold buttered toast eater - even soggy.

wanders away filled with shame and self loathing...

[zilla369]

I'm sure many of us toast-lovers have heard comedian Heywood Banks' song "TOAST!" (vocals accompanied by a toaster beaten with two forks), but for those who haven't... Click for the Flash movie

YEAH, TOAST!

[Viola da gamba]

My parents are English , and we all love toast - but whether it's to be hot or cold depends on what you're putting on it. I've eulogized about my love for hot toast with butter & honey melted into it somewhere else, but the point of cold toast is, as has been previously pointed out, as a vehicle for butter - and runny home-made marmalade. Or if I'm feeling too lazy to make melba toast.

[jhlurie]

I do think that cold toast is absurd, and yet I also kind of appreciate that pre-made toasty bread made by a company called Bimbo. In reality what they turn out being is like huge slab-like croutons, and I can see the utility of huge croutons.