the joy of toast

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While we are quick to praise those twin liquid crutches of your average singlespeeder that are strong beer and stronger coffee let us not forget the staff of life that is the humble piece of toast.

Bread is OK, but crisping it up in the toaster or under the grill makes all the difference. It's the foodstuff equivalent of the instant v. freshly ground contest. Besides, what other food goes down so well at any time of day? Edible as soon as you wake while other foods make you gag, to drunken preparations that aid falling asleep on the couch. Only toast with its choice of sweet or savoury toppings goes so well at either end of the day and all points in between.

Get back from a ride and you can be buttering toast quicker than it takes for the kettle to finish boiling. Then the dilemmas start. What to eat it with? So you eat the first 6 or 7 slices dripping with melted butter while you check the fridge and the cupboards for supplementary toppings. Which only makes things worse. Now you have to try and make your mind up. Peanut butter, marmite, cheese, eggs in their fried poached or scrambled forms, ham, jam, Shippams meat paste in putrid pots, lemon curd, chocolate spread, marmalade, peanut butter AND chocolate spread, marmite AND jam and so on 'til you're gorged.

There's no need to stop at white sliced either. Try french bread, brown bread, wholemeal bread, granary bread, rye bread (a personal favourite), cheese bread, beer bread, cinammon bread, hot cross buns, teacakes, barmcakes, muffins, bagels, ciabatta (the Bianchi of the bread world?).

No wonder that Britain is home to the ultimate toaster, the Dualit. Gracing hundreds of yuppie households since the 80s the chrome Dualit is only put to serious use in households that appreciate their toast. Forget pop-up toasters that don't and enjoy the reassuring whir of the Dualits simple clockwork timer. Have drunken musings why on earth it goes up to 6 as 2 will quite happily convert bread from frozen to burnt. Rumours of 12 slot versions to feed the ultimate toast addiction are treated like sightings of the Holy Grail, but the author can exclusively reveal to visitors to 32:sixteen that such mythical beasts do exist. But he's not saying where.

Even the good book realises that "Man cannot live by bread alone". Few people know that this is actually an abbreviated version of the full recommendation, and was originally followed by the words "He needs a good few rounds of toast now and then".

Spring 2000