potonthefire

by Pot On The Fire Free(Lit)

  But there is another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is grilled by the fire and is incomparably good. It is called toast.

  — Charles Moritz,Travels, Chiefly on Foot,

  through Several Parts of England in 1782

  Dry toast, let me start by saying, is not—at least in its ideal form—merelyunbuttered toast. To the uninitiated the two may look the same, even seem to taste the same, but for the aficionado there is between them all the difference in the world. Unbuttered toast is a substance half complete, and to be forced to eat it in that state is necessarily to feel deprived. Dry toast, from the moment it is sliced, has a destiny wholly its own.

  To comprehend this destiny, we must spend a moment with the worddry. In America, where volume and lightness are the virtues of good bread, commercial bakers make their money by pumping up our loaves with air. In Britain, where buyers still expect an honest heft, bakers comply by making bread damp—water, of course, being cheaper than wheat.14

  Consequently, in this country, it is the rare piece of bought bread thatdoesn’t emerge from the toaster as “dry toast.” In Britain, on the other hand, considerable effort has always been required to accomplish this—as can be gathered from Isabella Beeton’s careful instructions inMrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1869):

  To make dry toast properly, a great deal of attention is required; much more, indeed, than people generally suppose. Never use new bread for making any kind of toast, as it eats heavy, and, besides, is very extravagant. Procure a loaf of household bread about two days old; cut off as many slices as may be required, not quite ¼ inch in thickness; trim off the crusts and ragged edges, put the bread on a toasting-fork, and hold it before a very clear fire. Move it backwards and forwards until the bread is nicely coloured; then turn it and toast the other side, and do not place it so near the fire that it blackens. Dry toast should be more gradually made than buttered toast, as its great beauty consists in its crispness, and this cannot be attained unless the process is slow and the bread is allowed gradually to colour. It should never be made long before it is wanted, as it soon becomes tough, unless placed on the fender in front of the fire. As soon as each piece is ready, it should be put into a rack, or stood upon its edges, and sent quickly to table.

  In other words, “dry toast” is a bit of a misnomer, since we are talking about something different from a piece of rusk, even a warmed piece of rusk. True, with the English loaf, dampness isthe daunting obstacle to be hurdled, but dryness is only a by-product of the actual goal: a piece of toast that is in-and-out, fully, intenselycrisp. As Col. A. R. Kenney-Herbert (“Wyvern”) tartly observes inCulinary Jottings for Madras (1885),

  The easy process of toasting is frequently slurred over carelessly, and the bread is scorched, not toasted. If you watch a servant in the act of toasting, you will generally find that he places the slice of bread as close to the glowing embers as possible. Setting aside the risk that the bread thus incurs of catching a taint of gas from the live charcoal, it cannot be evenly and delicately browned, neither can it attain that thorough crispness which is asine quâ non in properly made toast. The slice of bread must be kept some little distance from the clear embers, being gradually heated through, crisped, and lightly and evenly browned by degrees.15

  Crispness versus dryness: this may seem a distinction hardly worth making, let alone brooding over, but there is a morsel of understanding here that will repay worrying out. Toast, after all, is a peculiarly British institution, and none of the usual explanations for this seem quite on the mark. Take, for instance, the oft-quoted thesis floated by H. D. Ren-ner in his idiosyncratic but beguilingOrigin of Food Habits (1944):

  One of the best examples of a habit originating from village conditions is the toasting of bread. The flavour of bread can be revived to some extent by re-warming, and even new flavours are created in toasting. Village life makes stale bread so common that toasting has become a national habit restricted to the British Isles.

  An appealing vision, yes, but the truth is that stale bread is part of country life all over Europe. However, outside Britain such crusts are more commonly used as sops—either dunked into soup or wine or dipped into an eggy batter and fried. For centuries, this was also what the English did with their stale bread, except that they developed a taste for toasting the bits they dropped into their drink. This may be because toast complements the taste of ale much more than it does wine, or it may be for a reason we will get to in a moment. But it was so much the case that the wordtoast was then as often coupled with brew as it now is with butter—and an old soak (or, as theOxford English Dictionary tactfully puts it, “a brisk old fellow fond of his glass”) was called an “old toast”—a phrase that, today, would be met with an uncomprehending stare.

  So, what caused the British taste in toast to turn from sopped to dry? Well, the first quote theO.E.D. uses to example this new trend provides us with a clue: “Sweeten your tea, and watch your toast” (Jonathan Swift, 1730). Instead of quaffing down a quart of ale for their breakfast and another for dinner, the British cottagers, imitating their betters, began brewing up a pot of tea. And, since tea—especially the cheaper sort, where the leaves are fired to a darker color to increase their flavor—is already “toasty” (the word is a venerable and quite favorable adjective in the tea trade), toast itself has no placein the cup. But toast is as comfortable set beside it as is the toasting iron next to the kettle on the hob.

  Tea and toast—the phrase alone is enough to summon up the scene: the murmuring fire, the bubbling kettle, the table laid with tea things, the sugar bowl and creamer, the butter crock. The curtains are drawn tight against the draft, but if we should happen to pull them aside, our eyes would be met by an ocean of well-trimmed grass of the softest and greenest of greens, wet with rain as fine as mist, and just as penetrating. It was in the chilly draft that pursued you down the hallway to this room; now, inside, closed windows and doors can barely keep it out.

  “The damp little island” Britain is called, and damp it is, the winters especially marked by chill and endless drizzle. In the days before central heating, that damp insinuated itself everywhere—through walls and bedclothes, through layer after layer of woolen clothing, right through to one’s very bones … the marrow of those bones. If you can remember what it was like stepping out of the shower at gym only to discover that the person before you had taken the last dry towel, then you can begin to imagine why, for the English, the worddry might not only shake off some of its less appealing attributes (arid, sapless, dusty, sharp-tongued) but also take on an almost spiritual glow. And to be dryand warm: is there any more evocative word for this condition than …toasty?

  Remember, dry toast is not really dry in the sense that a rusk is dry: parched to the point of desiccation. The toast rack—a device designed to hold several pieces of dry toast on edge and separate from each other—was invented because when the slices are just piled in a heap, they almost immediately become soggy. During the toasting process the heat permeates the tiny air pockets—the nooks and crannies—within the bread, vaporizing their moisture and crisping the inner surfaces that surround them. But it does not draw the moisture out of the crumb itself. No, dry toast is dry the waywe want to be when we step away from the fire: with the damp and chill driven out of every molecule of our being, our body having soaked up so much warmth that we begin to radiate it ourselves. And the phrase for this condition?Warm as toast.

  If it weren’t a bit too twee, dry toast might more precisely be calledtoasty toast, and we can see from this that there is a not-all-that-hidden subtext to the act of making it. Esther Copley pointed a wagging finger at it when she wrote, inCottage Cookery (1849), “As to toast, it may fairly be pronounced a contrivance for consuming bread, butter, firing, and time”—firing and time, the less puritanical among us might rejoin, that has rarely been put to better use.

  Also in toasting’s favor is its inherent egalitarianism. To assign the task to a servant
is almost to guarantee that the job will be hurried and the toast scorched, because—for the already warm—toast making is hot and tedious work. However, for those of us just in from damp and chilly weather, what better way to warm ourselves slowly, deliciously, and completely than to volunteer to make the toast? Let someone else go fill the kettle—we’ll pull a stool up to the hearth and reach for the toasting fork. And once the toast rack is full, we can settle into our favorite armchair, drawn up to that same fire, with hot toast and a steaming cup of tea, stretching out our legs to toast our toes… .

  If allowed to stand and become sodden, dry toast becomes indigestible. From the fire to the table is the thing.

  — Lizzie Heritage,Cassell’s Universal Cookery Book (1894)

  Matt and I put in a long morning—no lunch until sometime late in the afternoon—so coming up with the right midday snack for myself has become a matter of some urgency, and one that I never seem able to resolve for long. For reasons both logistical and calmative, this snack must be something I can look forward to, with the occasional break, day after day after day. Unfortunately, since I like to continue writing while I eat, all the usual favorites are ruled out: no potato chips or pork cracklings (they get grease on the computer keys); no salted peanuts in the shell (they leave a mess all over the desk). And, since I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I rarely feel like ducking out for a molasses doughnut, an apple fritter, or a bear claw (to name just three of the local coffee-break treats).

  Then a baker named Stephen Lanzalotta built a wood-fired bread oven in nearby South Brooksville and started turning out the best bread—to my mind—anywhere north of Boston. I was especially drawn to his variations onpain au levain, hefty, flavorful loaves that kept nicely for more than a week. These, I was sure, would make wonderful toast, and at last provide me with the quintessentialcasse-crouûte.

  However, it quickly became apparent that my years of making toast for buttering were no qualification for making toast to be eaten dry. In fact, this was so much so that after several attempts—and despite the goodness of the bread—I began to lose heart. I was abusing the bread by treating it this way: it kept coming out of the toaster with a crisp veneer laid over a totally untoasted, steamy-moist interior. A dousing of olive oil made it palatable—but it didn’t make it right.

  In desperation, I went to the bookshelf to consult some cookbooks that were written before the electric toaster arrived on the scene to convert toasting from an art to a techno-snap. I was met with a blast of admonitions. In my greedy way, I’d been cutting the slices as thick as I could and still get them to fit into the toaster slot. In my hasty way, I’d been sliding the timing lever all the way right (toast to the max)—and, even so, had been frustrated because I had to go and push the toast down for a second run.

  Totally wrong. So, first, I reluctantly began cutting my thick slice into two thin ones, since this is the only way to toast the bread all through. And then, to keep the edges from burning, I learned that I had to make my toast very, very slowly. The timing lever started moving farther and farther to the left, until it finally came to rest at “1.” This meant that to get the toast just right I had to run it through four or five short cycles with a brief rest between each.

  Is all this worth it? I think it is. The act of toasting changes bread, and toasting it so thoroughly transforms it. Mary Lincoln writes that this method produces “pure wheat farina,” by which she means an aggregation of lightly roasted crumbs, and a slice that possesses not only a penetrating toasty flavor but a lighter, drier, chewier texture, through and through.

  When I, following Matt’s example, started to take my coffee strong and black, it wasn’t because I thought it tasted better that way. At the time, we were working hard to find a bean we really liked and a brewing method that brought out the best it had to offer, and it gradually dawned on me that I had been missing out on another kind of pleasure: getting to know coffee—good coffee—on its own terms. I still use cream and sugar when I have coffee in a restaurant, and on other occasions simply for the treat. The thing is, I now know that coffee can be its own treat. And in the past few months I’ve learned the same thing about toast. I still love it buttered, but a snack of plain dry toast can be pretty great, too—a realization that had nothing to do with dietetic fashion and everything to do with Stephen Lanzalotta’s bread, and my learning how to toast it perfectly.

  There’s one last thing I haven’t told you about dry toast: it has the most amazing aroma. I used to work in an office cubicle about twelve feet square. That was almost fifteen years ago, but when I started making dry toast I found myself fantasizing about what it would have been like if I had had a toaster on my desk.

  Ten minutes before coffee break, I slip two slices of bread out of their sandwich bag and into the toaster slots, and push the lever down. During the first cycle, the toaster emits the delicately yeasty smell of warm bread. I go on about my work. When the bread pops up, I press the lever down again. This time the aroma is stronger, crisper. The yeastiness is gone, as are the undertones of steam. The bread isn’t toasted, but it begins to smell of toast. Up come the slices and back down they go. Now the whole cubicle begins to fill with the deep and penetrating fragrance of wholly toasted bread—every particle of crumb adding its mite. The slices pop up for the third time and are sent back down for a final round while I take my cup and head off to the coffee machine. The aroma seeps out after me to torment the others gathered at the snack cart. What jelly doughnut or cheese Danish can compete with even thesmell of hot toast? In a week there is a toaster on every desk; at coffee break the air in our corridor is good enough to eat … with butter, or without.

  “Toast,” said Berry, taking the two last pieces that stood in the rack. “I’m glad to get back to toast.”

  — Dornford Yates,Adèle & Co. (1931)

  DRY TOAST

  How to Make It

  To make the best kind of dry toast, you must start with the right kind of bread: a loaf with a dense, moist crumb.A pain de campagne orpain au levain is the perfect bread for this, but so is a whole-grain loaf. To get the proper texture, cut the bread into slices that are about -inch thick.

  For a toaster.Turn it to its lowest setting and keep pushing down the toasting lever until the toast is golden brown. Some rotation of the slices may be necessary to keep the edges from burning. Ideally, you’ll not be standing by the toaster the whole time but engaged in some other business so that the slices can rest a few moments between trips (thus the advantage of keeping a toaster by your desk or VCR).

  For a toaster oven.Preheat to 350—F and then set the slices on the toasting rack and bake them until they have turned a golden brown. Again, some adjustment may be necessary.

  In either instance.If the toast burns,chuck it and start over. As Sarah Tyson Rorer, inMrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book (1902), emphatically puts it: “Burned bread is objectionable, and has a bad flavor, no matter how much of the outside is scraped away.” Hence Harry Graham’s heartfelt lament inRuthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1901):

  Making toast by the fireside,

  Nurse fell in the grate and died.

  And what makes it ten times worse,

  All the toast was burnt with nurse.

  How to Eat It

  In winter, salt butter would be sent for and toast would be made and eaten with celery. Toast was a favourite dish for family consumption. “I’ve made ’em a stack o’ toast as high as up to their knees,” a mother would say on a winter Sunday afternoon before her brood came in from church. Another dish upon which they prided themselves was thin slices of cold, boiled streaky bacon on toast, a dish so delicious that it deserves to be more widely popular.

  — Flora Thompson,Lark Rise to Candleford (1945)

  Plain.About this, surely, enough has been said. But the innocent simplicity of the following recipe, with which Eliza Acton concludesThe English Bread Book (1859), delights me.

  BREAD CRISPS

  TO SERVE INSTEAD OFBISCUI
TS FORDESSERT: Cut thin shavings of bread from a stale loaf, spread them on a dish, or lay them singly on the tin tray of an American oven, and dry them very gradually until they are perfectly crisp; then bring them to a pale straw colour; withdraw them from the fire, and, as soon as they are cold, pile them on a napkin, and serve them without delay. They require an extremely gentle oven to produce the proper effect on them; but, if well managed, will retain their crispness for several hours; and it may always be renewed by heating them through afresh. By many persons they are much preferred to biscuits, being considered far more delicate. A small American oven answers for them extremely well if placed at a distance from the fire: they require quite half an hour to dry them as they ought to be done.

  Buttered.We’ve seen that dry toast is not unbuttered toast, but a deeply crispy kind of toast. So there is no reason on earth not to eat it buttered, as long as the toast is kept hot and crisp. Here again Sarah Tyson Rorer gives us succinct advice: “Send at once to the table. Butter while eating.”

  Dipped.“Toast that is to be served with anything turned over it, should have the slices first dipped quickly in a dish of hot water turned from the boiling teakettle, with a little salt thrown in.” So direct the authors ofThe White House Cook Book (1915), who follow up with almost four pages of examples: tomato toast, baked eggs on toast, oyster toast, reed birds on toast.

  This may seem to go against all I’ve written, but consider—dipping (or dunking!) the toast only anticipates what is about to happen in your mouth, that moment when crispness collapses into succulence. The trick is to move quickly in both the dipping and the eating. So, for instance, cook some broccoli florets in lightly salted water while you make dry toast. Lift out the florets and toss them in a little garlicky olive oil, seasoned with both red and black pepper. Then dip the dry toast into the still boiling broccoli water for a scant second, set it in a bowl, spread the florets over it, along with a scattering of grated cheese. Another notion: dip the toast into homemade beef or chicken broth and heap with sautéed mushrooms.