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Brown Bread Toast
Cut brown bread in thin slices; dry in oven, then toast; butter each slice, and cover with scalded milk.
A two-line supper dish that depends entirely on the state of the bread: dense brown bread crumbles under a knife unless it is dried first, which is why the oven step comes before the toaster.
- What "brown bread" means hereIn a Boston book of this period this most likely means steamed brown bread — rye, cornmeal and wheat flour with molasses, cooked in a mould rather than baked — though the term was also used loosely for graham or whole-wheat loaves. Whole-wheat sandwich bread will work but gives a flatter, less molasses-sweet result; a canned or home-steamed brown bread is probably closer to the intent.
- Slice thin, and use a serrated knifeAim for a scant 1/4 inch. Steamed loaves are moist and close-grained, and a thick slice will stay soggy in the middle once the milk goes on.
- Drying the slicesThe recipe specifies only "dry in oven". In a modern oven, 250–300F for 10–15 minutes, turning once, does the job. The point is to drive off moisture, not to colour the bread; browning happens at the toasting stage.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating to about 180F, when the surface shivers and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge — not a rolling boil, which will catch on the bottom and taste of it. Allow roughly 1/2 cup of milk per slice.
- Assemble at the last minuteButter the slices while still hot, lay them in a warmed shallow dish, and pour the milk over just before serving. Left to stand, the toast goes to paste.
- Yield and seasoningThe original gives no yield; four slices will serve two. It also leaves the dish unseasoned — a little salt in the milk, and sometimes a scrape of sugar, is a reasonable addition.
Milk toast belongs to the long American tradition of invalid and nursery cookery — bread, milk and butter, warm and easy to swallow, the sort of thing prescribed for a weak stomach or a late return home. Substituting steamed brown bread for white makes it a New England dish specifically: brown bread was a Saturday-night fixture alongside baked beans, and Sunday's leftover loaf, too dense to make good ordinary toast, dried and toasted well. Lowney's Cook Book (published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate makers, in the early 1900s) is one of the books in which such a dish turns up. A dish this plain earned its place there for the same reason it earned a place in the sickroom: it needs nothing but heat, and it cannot go far wrong.