TRIANGLE OR RECTANGLE?

I’m the first to admit that the old blog-brain has been running on empty for a while now, and you might well have been suspecting that I’ve been sucking on fumes of some sort for a few mornings of late, but that’s the way things are in Lesser Blogfordshire at the moment.

However, even I had pause to think that I might well be scraping the underside of the barrel today when I started reflecting on my strange relationship with toast. Obviously, this is not the place to have any discussion upon the history of toast, there are wiser and more informed sources that you can go to for that kind of information, instead I will confine myself to telling you about my sad and sorry history with this culinary variation on a slice or two of bread.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore toast, and it’s become a cornerstone of what I mockingly refer to as my “diet” since I started not to head off out at lunchtimes to buy my lunch, but I do seem to have a bizarrely complex relationship with the stuff.

Take for example the simple bread choice, brown or white? Now, on a basic, superficial level, my preference is always, always for white bread. I love the taste of it, although the choice of bread is always a delicate matter. A fresh baked, crusty loaf from a bakery is always first choice, although the slice thickness has to have a mathematical precision that is beyond many. Too thick and the heat penetration might be inadequate leaving the middle possibly cold and soggy, too thin and the toast is just too crispy.

Then there is the vexed question of whether it should be lightly or heavily toasted? My own preference is towards the lighter end of the toast spectrum, a pale golden brown rather than burnt umber or black. Setting the toaster to “just right” is always a problem and so I set it very low these days, and allow for a “double toasting” which allows for a swift “toast turn” (sometimes with a 90 degree twist) mid toasting to give a more even toasting.

When it comes to the manufactured sliced loaf things can get trickier. I tend to find that the cheaper “own brand” supermarket loaves should be avoided, and I find Kingsmill a touch too stodgy for my liking, so I’m a bit of a Warburton’s man through and through (other breads are available).

Then we move on to the taxing question of whether to have it hot or cold? Hot buttered toast is such a well-loved cliché of the toast phenomenon that it is hard for me to dismiss it completely, but, for me, it is only truly delightful if spread and eaten straight from the toaster. Any toast just sitting around soaking up the butter makes the toast itself too soggy for me, so I’d rather wait for the unadorned toasted slices to cool down enough for me to apply the huge plaster-like slabs of (lightly salted) butter that I prefer.

How to cut your toast is a very personal thing, but I do have a preference for the “classic” triangular over the rectangular, mostly because it reduces the amount of corners, but also because it just looks “right”. If the toast remains uncut, I do have a slightly strange habit (no doubt picked up in my youth but I seem to have persisted with it) of biting off all the corners first, leaving a kind of “Maltese Cross” effect. Then each of the “legs” are bitten off (sometimes consecutively clockwise or anti-clockwise) leaving the central “best bit” for last, having disposed of the least appealing part, those hard, dry corners at the beginning of the eating process. For a long time this was such a normal routine for me that I didn’t even notice I was doing it, so now a swift diagonal cut is all it takes to stop me from annoying whoever I happen to be eating with.

Toppings make for an interesting different set of problems. Marmalade and cheese spreads to me should only be eaten upon brown or wholemeal toast, and these are the only instances where I do prefer to toast that kind of bread. Peanut Butter either needs to be applied directly to the hot butter as with the “straight from the toaster” approach mentioned above, or wait to be applied onto cooling toast and added to the plaster-like slabs for a truly tasty concoction.

Thank heavens for those statins you prescribed, Doctor B!

If this is what I’m reduced to, maybe I need a break from the blog...?

Perhaps I should go and make myself some toast instead.