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Toast, Dry
Be careful to have a clear bright fire, and see that the bars are quite clean. Cut as many slices as may be required from a loaf of bread two days old. These slices should be very thin--less than a quarter of an inch thick. Cut off the crust, and warm the bread on both sides for one minute before toasting it; then put it on the toasting-fork, hold it a little distance from the fire, move it about till it is lightly and equally toasted, and when it is done upon one side turn it to do the other. Dry toast should be coloured gradually, as its perfection consists in its being crisp and dry without being very dark and brown or in the least burnt. It should be made a few minutes only before it is wanted, as it soon becomes heavy. It should never be placed flat on a dish or table, but be put at once in the toast-rack, or, if this is not at hand, two slices should be made to lean one against the other.
An open-fire method for what a Victorian household called dry toast — thin, crisp all the way through, not the soft-centred toast of a modern toaster. The instructions translate cleanly if you understand that the heat source is radiant, not enclosed.
- The hinge: pre-warmingThe recipe has you warm both sides for a minute before browning; the likely purpose is to start drying the crumb so the slice crisps through rather than merely colouring on the surface.
- Slice thicknessUnder a quarter inch is thinner than any bagged sandwich loaf; you will need an unsliced loaf and a serrated knife. Two-day-old bread cuts thin far more cleanly than fresh.
- Substituting modern equipmentA broiler, held well back from the element, is the nearest equivalent to the toasting-fork before a grate — it gives the same radiant, one-side-at-a-time heat you can watch and control. A pop-up toaster runs too fast and too hot to dry a slice gradually.
- Oven routeFor a batch, a low oven with the slices on a rack will dry thin bread to a pale crisp, though the temperature and timing are a modern addition: the recipe knows only the fire. The effect is close to Melba toast.
- "Clean bars"Coal grates accumulated soot and grease that would taint the bread. The modern equivalent is a broiler pan or rack with no burnt residue on it.
- Why the toast-rackLaying hot toast flat traps escaping steam underneath and softens it — the "heavy" texture the recipe warns against. Standing the slices upright, or leaning two together, lets both faces dry.
- YieldThe recipe sets no quantity, only 'as many slices as may be required'; two thin slices per person is a reasonable modern allowance as a plain accompaniment.
Dry toast belonged to the Victorian literature of invalid cookery, alongside beef tea and barley water: it was food for the sick, the dyspeptic and the very young, prescribed because it was thought easier to digest than soft bread. The distinction between dry toast and buttered toast was taken seriously enough that some books appear to have given them separate entries, and the toast-rack — a piece of tableware with essentially one function — is often said to owe its existence to the crispness described here. Bread two days old was not thrift alone; staler crumb has lost enough moisture to slice thin without tearing and to dry evenly at the fire. The same principle, taken a step further, produces Melba toast, by tradition traced to the chef Escoffier and the singer Nellie Melba, whose name became attached to thin twice-crisped toast in the years around the turn of the twentieth century.