8. Toast - the proper way

I don’t get much feedback about these offerings.  The little I get, complain about the length.  I remember reading that Shakespeare had a similar problem. His agent, after Bill had submitted ‘The Merchant of Venice’, suggested drastically reducing the Shylock rôle. 

“Concentrate on the love angle, Billy.  That’s what the public wants.” 

However, when you feel passionately about something, as I do about toast, you have to let it all out.

I’ve mentioned before Travels with a wheelchair in Jamaica that I like Americans but I am not so keen on America. I have no problem at all with the fact that they pronounce ‘privacy’ as ‘pr-eye-vacy’ or ‘vase’ as ‘vace’ or call it ‘zee’ instead of ‘zed’.  

A word that has really started to bother me a lot recently is their pronunciation of the word, “herb.”  All of them, even educated Americans, leave the ‘h’ off and say, “erb”.  What? Is “ouse” their favourite television programme? Or is “Ouston” a city in Texas? No, of course not. I’ve also mentioned before that their pronunciation of “math” without the ‘s’ on the end drives me mad and I am fairly sure that they spell tyre as “tire” only to annoy because they know it teases.

I was doing some social work last weekend when I taught an American barmaid how to say, “ter-mar-tow juice and wurs-ter sauce”, instead of: “ter-may-dow juice and wus-ses-ter-shyer sauce”.  I promised her that her tips would increase as a result.

I can even put up with the very few American individuals who believe that rules and conventions that we all live by do not apply to them.  Four years ago, when we first came to Cayman, I was in a car rental office by the airport to enquire whether they had any used vehicles for sale. In front of me was an American - I suspect he was from Texas.

“I want a left-hand drive car,” he informed the counter clerk.

“We don’t have any sir,” she replied.  “We drive on the left here and sit on the right.

“Yes, I know that,” he snapped, “but I sit on the left.”

Since I’ve lived on Cayman, I have spent quite a lot of time in the States.  When we lived in Winchmore Hill and if we wanted to buy a new television, we’d get in the car and drive to Enfield to buy one.  Now it’s a case of hopping on to a plane and making the one-hour trip to Miami.

We also fly from Miami to London nowadays rather than the direct flight from Cayman.  This is because from Miami we fly in a 747, which has four engines, rather than in a 767 with only two engines from Cayman.  767s are all we are allowed here in Cayman. Apparently our runway isn’t long enough for a proper plane.  I’m sorry BA but common sense dictates that it’s safer to fly across 4500 miles of ocean with four engines than it is with only two and so it’s Virgin from Miami for us.

Caroline also has to attend conferences in the US quite often.  I usually tag along.  In the last four years I must have spent more than 150 nights in the USA and that means that I have had more than 150 American breakfasts.  Admittedly, most of those were hospital breakfasts but my moan, or ‘observation’ as I prefer to call it, applies to them all.  

When we have to find a hotel, Caroline insists on doing the booking and we always stay in 4 or 5-star places. She claims that she always gets good deals by using the Internet and I never question her because I love being pampered in American hotels. You really are made to feel special. We have had breakfast in Marriotts, Hiltons, Deltas and best of all, the Biltmore in Miami.  But they ALL serve crappy breakfasts.

Sure, they can all produce a perfectly poached egg or delightful, fluffy pancakes but none of them – not even the Biltmore – can make toast!

Toast is what breakfast is all about.  Many people are under the delusion that toast has to be piping hot with the butter melting on it.  They are as wrong about that as are those people who believe that there is an ice cream flavour better than vanilla.  Perfect toast must be at room temperature.  This is typical of what tends to happen:

It is 9:30 a.m. in the Biltmore, June 2007. I have just been asked by Eva, our waitress, if I would like anything after my pancakes and syrup.

“Toast and marmalade please.”  Then I was subject to the inquisition”

“Wheat or rye?”

“Wheat.”

“Brown or white?”

“Brown.” 

“Whole grain or multi grain?”

“Oh, I don’t care. Just bring me some toast!”

“Here you are sir,” says Eva five minutes later. “Enjoy.”  Ugh!  

She leaves me with a wicker basket containing what seems to be nothing to eat - just a linen napkin.  I unfold the napkin to discover two slices of steaming hot, toasted bread inside.

Fresh bread has high water content. When you make bread, you find that the flour/water ratio by weight is about 5 : 2.  The water doesn’t all evaporate during baking but when toasted, bread becomes hot and most of the remaining water evaporates and escapes as water vapour. It is the absence of water that makes toast crispy.  

That’s why slightly stale bread makes better toast than fresh bread.  If the vapour cannot escape, it will condense and the toast becomes soggy.  Wrapping hot toast in linen ensures that is soggy. It cannot possibly be crispy.

I have a strategy to resurrect soggy toast. I rescue it immediately from its padded, linen cell and balance the two slices on my plate in the shape of an inverted V and leave them for two or three minutes.  The steam escapes and the toast may become almost satisfactory.

I called Eva over and asked if I could have a toast rack.  She didn’t know what I was talking about.  She had never heard of a toast rack! It’s no wonder that the Americans gave up on cricket if, 150 years later, they have failed to grasp the very simple concept of the toast rack.

When I got back to Cayman, I bought a toast rack and posted it to Eva, c/o the Biltmore, Miami. I included very simple but precise instructions on how it should be used.  I was so determined to teach her properly that I even referred to the “color” of the toast and not its “colour”.  

There are good and bad toast racks.  Ceramic ones with solid partitions, are useless.  The steam cannot get away, air cannot circulate and water forms on the surfaces and will get on to the toast.  An outline scaffold of thin metal is what’s needed.

Last September I was having breakfast in the Biltmore once more and I asked for toast.  It arrived just as it had two years earlier - hot and soggy.  Eva no longer works there and I presume she took her toast rack with her.  Another possibility is that the package I sent her was opened by customs.  They would have been baffled, probably assumed that it was part of a bomb mechanism and passed it on up.  It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the Head of the FBI is the only American eating decent toast today.

The consistency and quality of the bread is of paramount importance.  I can’t advise you as I don’t know about your local bakeries. Here in Cayman, ‘Italian Bread’, fresh from Kirk’s is superb. It’s as good as the bread I used to buy from the Victoria Bakery in Barnet and I can’t pay it a higher compliment.

However, I do have a complaint. Kirk’s wrap loaves in a transparent, plastic bag and attach a label bearing the ‘Sell by’ date.  Today is Monday February 22nd and bread baked this morning will say, “Sell by Feb. 26th.” Not even, “Best by”.  They could put any date!  That means that anyone going in on Wednesday February 24th will assume that the unsold bread was baked that day and is fresh.  It certainly won’t be.

Back in the 70s and 80s I would buy ‘Mothers Pride’ from our corner shop in London.  As I approached the bread shelf I would be saying, “BOPGY, BOPGY, BOPGY” over and over in my head.  This was to tell me when the bread had been baked.  Sealing each loaf was a coloured plastic strip:

B = Blue = Monday

O = Orange = Tuesday

P = Purple = Wednesday

G = Green = Thursday

Y = Yellow = Friday.

Wonderfully honest and helpful. They don’t do it anymore. I suppose the shopkeepers objected because people like me wouldn’t buy Tuesday’s bread on a Thursday.  All I can say is that the shopkeepers shouldn’t have over-ordered.

The way in which the bread is toasted in unimportant.   Any method will do.   As a matter of interest though, why do manufacturers of toasters make them with a dial that, if it is turned to its fullest extent, burns the bread to a cinder? What’s the point of that?  I digress.  Remember that perfect toast is at room temperature.

Americans, sort yourselves out! Come on Barack. Your figures are dropping and you need a boost. Stop talking about healthcare and the economy. Introduce something that will change lives:

Talk about Toast Racks!