Toast
I didn't write anything yesterday - well it was a very busy day - but I did think about what to write about. As I went to have my piece of bread and cheese for lunch, David was going to toast it because it was day-old bread. Well I decided I preferred it as bread, because it was still pretty fresh, and stopped him, but it did make me think of the topic of toast - another peculiarly British thing. And weird really, for such a non-breakfast person, that here we have another rant about something associated with breakfast.
BASIC BUT WITH SUCH POTENTIAL
Then I started looking for pictures and quotes and immediately found that what I had thought would be quick and easy was actually a pretty big topic - and others have certainly already done it and much better than I. There's a blog called British Food for a start that has a potted history of historical methods of cooking it, and then I found that Elizabeth David had written a whole essay on the topic in her book English Bread and Yeast Cookery - and I shall be quoting from that. So for a moment I thought, why bother, it's been done before. But then I decided to go ahead anyway and be derivative as I always am. But then there is nothing new under the sun is there?
The first question to ask is why is toast such a British thing? And of course the answer is that it isn't. Just sticking to the two cuisines that I know - France and Italy - toast is certainly known there. It's just different.
In Italy it's bruschetta and crostini. There seems to be a very subtle difference between the two. Bruschetta is made with larger pieces of rougher bread - the basic topping being just olive oil and garlic, though we mostly know it as having tomato and basil, garlic and olive oil as well. Crostini, are smaller - more likely from a baguette - and having a wider variety of toppings. Traditionally, as in England, the toast would be grilled on the fire. In France we have croque monsieur and croque madame (variations on the toasted cheese and ham sandwich) as well as pain perdu - although this is not necessarily French in spite of its french name (also known as French toast).
Apparently Apicius has a recipe for this and it was much loved in medieval times. To make it you soak the stale bread in a sweetened mixture of egg and milk and then fry it, adding toppings, spices and other flavourings at will. It's another very trendy cafe breakfast thing. The French also have horrible little things that you buy in packets called toast or tartines which really are very dry small pieces of toast - more like a biscuit really.
Back to why it is so English? It has been suggested that it is because there were lots of isolated communities (villages) where the bread was often stale and dry. Toast is a way of reviving it. But as Elizabeth David points out England was not the only place with isolated villages and stale bread. Indeed on our holidays in France and Italy we often find ourselves in isolated villages with stale bread for breakfast because it's too far to go to get fresh bread. So we sprinkle it with water and reheat it in the oven - one way of restoring it to some sort of freshness. The other way though is to toast it. Elizabeth David thinks the answer to its Britishness lies in the preponderance of coal fires which leant themselves to toasting bread - either on a toasting fork or a vertical kind of rack. (But surely all those other countries had fires too - I mean look at the bruschetta picture above.)
When I was a child we used to toast bread with a toasting fork sometimes. It wasn't our normal method (that was grilling) but it was an adventurous kind of treat. We did crumpets this way too. Elizabeth David describes it, "Although I fancy that more toast fell off the fork into the fire and was irretrievably blackened than ever reached our plates, I can recall the great sense of achievement when now and again a slice did come out right, evenly golden, with a delicious smell and especially, as I remember, with the right, proper texture, so difficult to describe and so fleeting. Only when it was hot from the fire and straight off the fork did that toast have the requisite qualities."
And what did we put on the toast? Well - dripping. What is dripping I hear you say? Well dripping is rendered animal fat. My mother would cut surplus fat off meat, put it in a dish and always have it in the oven. Whenever the oven went on the dish would be there and the fat would melt a little more. As it melted it would be drained off, poured into a stoneware jar and stored in the larder to be used for cooking and for spreading on toast. yes I know - it was not at all healthy - but we didn't know about cholesterol then. We just thought it was delicious. Poor man's food again. A taste of roast beef without the beef.
"There is good dripping toast by the fire in the evening. Good jelly dripping and crusty, home-baked bread, with the mealy savour of ripe wheat roundly in your mouth and under your teeth, roasted sweet and crisp and deep brown, and covered with little pockets where the dripping will hide and melt and shine in the light, deep down inside, ready to run when your teeth bite in." Richard Llewellyn - How Green was my Valley
Then there were all the other things we had on toast - baked beans, sardines, scrambled eggs, fried eggs and - most exotic - Welsh rarebit - the English version of croque monsieur (poorer than the French version because there was no ham - just cheese).
We had these things for that curious meal called high tea - and you know I now can't recall whether it was a substitute for dinner or not or whether it was just something we had when we came home from school hungry. But I think that's when we had bread and jam. As I said before, my diet was not particularly healthy. I still love sardines on toast though. They have to be Mediterranean sardines - I have been trying out others from Vietnam, Thailand, Norway, Canada, but they just don't taste the same. And they have to be in olive oil. Simple but with such a nostalgic taste of the sea. And full of Omega 3!
As I said before we only occasionally toasted our bread in front of the fire. Our usual method was under the grill and Delia Smith still thinks this is the best way. "I am not a disciple of automatic toasters. The ones I've experienced all seem to be a bit hit and miss, and if you're rather inept at slicing bread (like me), then they're not very helpful at all because if the bread is slightly wonky, a) it probably won't go in the toaster at all, and , b) if it does, one bit ends up not being toasted at all while the other bit is giving off nasty black smoke signals!" You would think that by now they would have produced the perfect toaster, but we have tried lots of different ones and I have to say that none of them are that great. My main complaint is their slowness but as Delia says, it is also difficult to get it just right. So really we should be using the grill. The trouble with this method is that you have to watch it all the time or you will burn it. At least the toaster can be left to do its thing.
One thing is for sure - you have to eat toast hot. It is horrible cold. Well I think so anyway. Spread your butter and choice of spread while it's hot. That way it all soaks into the bread. Delia, however, says you should first of all stand it upright in a toast rack - "Because they are a brilliant invention. Freshly made toast contains steam, and if you place it in a vertical position, in which the air is allowed to circulate, the steam escapes and the toast becomes crisp and crunchy. Putting it straight on to a plate means the steam is trapped underneath, making it damp and soggy." And you should never cover it with a cloth or anything because this also makes it damp and soggy.
Other toasty things - Melba toast - very thin and curly for spreading with pate and other exotic things. Usually served cold. You make your toast, split it in half and then toast the untoasted side under a grill until it curls. Said to be invented by Escoffier for Dame Nellie Melba. Toasted sandwiches - we have machines for these - a quick and tasty snack - you can fill them with anything you fancy.
Now who knew there was so much to think about toast? And it's not even one of my favourite things. I think I prefer crumpets - except when it comes to sardines on toast and scrambled eggs on toast too - now that's comfort food.
