Home › Muffins, Buns, and Biscuit › Cream Toast
Cream Toast
Cook as the above, using half cream and half milk. Place pinch of soda in cream to prevent its curdling. The milk can be flavored with vanilla and slightly thickened with a teaspoonful of corn starch dissolved in cold milk. Either of the recipes can be made with Graham bread and baked, if desired.
This is a variation entry: it assumes the milk toast recipe that precedes it, in which slices of toasted bread are laid in a dish and hot seasoned milk poured over. Read it as instructions for the liquid, not for the whole dish.
- What "cook as the above" meansThe standard method is to toast bread on both sides, butter it lightly, arrange it in a warm deep dish, and pour over scalded milk seasoned with salt and butter. Here half the milk is replaced with cream, which gives a richer, faintly sweet sauce.
- The pinch of sodaA pinch is about 1/8 teaspoon for a pint of liquid, and no more. Soda raises the pH so the dairy proteins are less likely to break when scalded; too much leaves a soapy, slightly metallic taste and dulls the colour. With modern pasteurised cream, curdling is far less of a risk than it was with older, more acidic dairy, so the soda is optional.
- Cream to useHalf-and-half (about 12% fat) or light cream (about 18-20%) matches the intent. Heavy cream at 36% will make the sauce cloying against plain toast.
- Thickening with corn starchOne teaspoon of cornstarch slaked in a little cold milk will thicken a pint only slightly, to the body of thin cream. Add it to the milk once it is hot, then bring it to a bare simmer for a minute or two so the starch loses its raw taste; it needs to approach boiling to reach full body, and stays thin and raw-tasting if merely warmed.
- Vanilla and saltFlavoured with vanilla this reads as a sweet dish, though the recipe adds no sugar; if you want it sweet, a little -- perhaps a tablespoon per pint -- suits. Left unsweetened it is a savoury supper dish, and the salt is usually added to the milk.
- Graham breadGraham bread is a coarse whole-wheat loaf. It absorbs more liquid than white bread and softens faster, so pour the sauce over just before serving.
- "And baked, if desired"For the baked version, layer the toast in a buttered dish, pour the hot milk over, and bake until set at the edges and lightly browned. The recipe gives no temperature or time; a moderate oven, around 350F for 20 to 25 minutes, is a reasonable modern equivalent. It becomes a plain bread pudding without eggs.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide a pint of liquid dresses about six slices of toast, enough for three or four as a supper or breakfast dish. Serve immediately in shallow bowls, as it goes pasty on standing.