Toasted

Stop taking toast for granted and please give him a big kiss on his buttery lips when you next meet. Toast is probably my best friend, we have breakfast together most mornings, we never talk, we just enjoy the moment.

This basic form of cooking transforms one of the most wonderful pieces of food, a slice of bread, and intensifies it’s flavour through caramelising the carbohydrate sugars on its surface. Even cheap shitty supermarket bread can be turned into something delicious. The other aspect that changes through the toasting process is the texture of the bread, it becomes crispy, and if the slice is thick enough you will still have the soft bready crumb in the centre.

When toasting bread I like to push the caramelisation to a maximum, but obviously never stepping into the realm of burning. Burning is bad.  Because the bread is drying out slightly, you get a crispier texture, but I never want to dry my toast out completely, as it will verge on feeling stale in my mouth, I want it soft in the middle. To gain this result you need an intense high heat and a pop up toaster is probably the best man for the job. An oven grill is good, but it can give an uneven browning, which pisses me off.

When I have Marmite, probably my preferred spread, it is important to apply the butter whist the toast is still very hot and then the Marmite straight after the butter, this method mixes the Marmite into the melted butter and gives a well distributed spreading of both components. Otherwise the bread can become fragile from soaking up the butter and it can break up. My hand normally hovers over the toaster ready to pounce on the piping hot slices, with my plate, knife and butter at the ready. Obviously keep your butter and Marmite out of the fridge; this will make it much easier to spread. Once the spreading is done I like to eat my toast straight away, while it’s still warm, and whilst standing up looking out of the window to my balcony door. The morning river view is nearly as delightful as the salty Marmite butter dripping down my chin. Maybe I'll have one more slice!