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Toast, Buttered
Toast which is to be buttered should be cut from a loaf one or two days old, in slices about the third of an inch thick. Cut off the crust, and toast the bread before a clear bright fire. When it is equally and lightly coloured on one side, turn it to do the other. Place little pieces of butter here and there upon it, put it before the fire for a minute or two till the butter is soft, then spread it upon the toast, taking care not to press heavily upon the bread, or the toast will be heavy. Cut each slice separately into strips an inch and a half broad, and pile these on a hot dish. If one or two slices are cut through together, the butter will sink from the upper piece to the lower. Some cooks hold the toasted bread over a bowl of boiling water for a minute before buttering it. This is to soften it, that it may take the butter more readily. Buttered toast should be prepared at the last moment, and served very hot.
A method written for an open coal fire, but the reasoning still holds under a broiler or in a toaster. The point of the whole exercise is toast that stays light rather than compressing into a damp slab.
- The hinge: do not pressButter is spread only after it has gone soft, and with almost no downward pressure. Pressing crushes the open crumb that toasting has just dried out, which is what the book means by "heavy" toast.
- Day-old breadA loaf one or two days old has lost enough free moisture to colour evenly and hold its structure; very fresh bread tends to toast unevenly. A soft supermarket sandwich loaf is not good material for this.
- ThicknessA third of an inch is roughly 8-9 mm, thinner than most standard sliced bread. Cut it yourself from an unsliced white or milk loaf.
- "Before a clear bright fire"Radiant heat from glowing coals with no smoke or flame. The modern equivalent is a broiler element at full heat with the rack set two to three inches below, watched continuously; a toaster gives the same result with less romance.
- Softening the butterStanding the toast near the fire for a minute or two to soften the butter can be done by simply using butter left at room temperature. The purpose is to spread without working the surface.
- The bowl of boiling waterHolding the toast in steam for a minute is a genuine old trick, and it does let the bread absorb butter more readily. It also costs you most of the crispness, so treat it as a choice rather than a step.
- CuttingCut each slice singly, not in a stack. The book's reason is that in a stack the butter sinks from the upper piece into the lower.
- Serving and yieldServing -- Buttered toast does not hold. Prepare it at the last moment and serve it very hot on a heated dish, as the recipe directs.
Buttered toast belongs to the ritual of the British tea table, and it was the kind of thing a household with a fire would have made often. The technique described is bound to the coal grate: bread was held on a long-handled toasting fork or a hinged wire toaster before the bars, which gave the dry radiant heat that browns without steaming. The fussiness about slice thickness, single cutting and light-handed spreading reflects a period when toast was a course in its own right rather than a vehicle for something else, and when the alternative -- toast made over flame or smoke, or buttered while still stiff -- was a familiar household failure. Electric toasters came into use over the following decades and eventually became common, which quietly retired most of the skill this entry was written to preserve.