Class at Last.

Over the past six months or so I’ve developed a new habit when making toast. Instead of taking it out of the toaster as soon as it pops up, I leave it in there for about thirty seconds first. I realised, you see – after all these eons of life – that if you butter toast as soon as it pops up, two factors come into play: Firstly, there’s still a certain amount of moisture left in the bread; and secondly, it’s at maximum heat. The heat causes more of the butter to melt and be absorbed into toast which is still a little soft, and so what you get is a squidgy slice of toast. If, on the other hand, you wait patiently for half a minute, some of the moisture has evaporated and the bread is less hot so it absorbs less butter. Result: a crispy slice of toast, which is how I prefer it.

Do you realise what this means, and in consequence why it’s worth committing to a blog post? It means that after all these years I can finally claim to be a connoisseur in one area of the culinary art. In all other matters pertaining to food I’m as basic as basic gets, but now I have standards and a level of expertise in the matter of making toast. Maybe I should write a book.

I have to admit, of course, that I do use wholemeal wheat bread which is conveniently sliced and provided in a plastic bag by Messrs Hovis. If I laboured diligently to discover and try different kinds of bread, maybe the story would follow a different narrative. But life is about taking one step at a time, isn’t it? It is. Maybe I’ll make friends with a German one day and be persuaded to move onto stage two.