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Dry Toast
Cut stale bread in one quarter inch slices; remove crusts or not as preferred. Dry in oven; place on toaster and toast over clear fire, first on one side and then on the other, having both sides a golden brown. Arrange in toast rack or cover with napkin.
A two-stage method: the bread is first dried through, then browned. The result is crisp all the way to the centre rather than crusted over a soft interior, which matters when it has to sit under a chafing-dish sauce.
- The hinge: dry first, brown secondSkipping the oven stage gives ordinary pop-up toast, which goes limp the moment anything creamed touches it. The book gives no oven setting; a low oven (in the region of 250-300F) until the slices are stiff and pale, perhaps 15-20 minutes, then brown them.
- "A clear fire"On a coal or wood range this meant embers giving steady radiant heat with no flame or smoke. A broiler set a few inches below the element, or a hot dry skillet, does the same work; watch it, since dried bread colours in well under a minute a side.
- The toasterNot an appliance. A hinged wire frame with a long handle, held over the fire and flipped. Any wire rack under a broiler substitutes.
- Slice thicknessA quarter inch is thinner than a standard sandwich slice, closer to what a serrated knife gives from a firm unsliced loaf. Soft supermarket bread will not hold that gauge; use a day-old country or Pullman loaf.
- Why stale breadDrier crumb sets faster and warps less. Fresh bread steams itself in the oven stage and curls at the edges.
- Toast rack versus napkinThe rack is the better choice here. Standing the slices on edge lets steam escape; a napkin traps it and softens what you just spent twenty minutes crisping, though it does keep the toast warm.
- Its job in this chapterIts job -- Dry toast is the standard platform for chafing-dish preparations such as creamed oysters, lobster and welsh rarebit. Cut the slices to fit the plate before toasting rather than after, since brittle toast shatters under the knife.
Lowney's Cook Book was written by Maria Willett Howard and published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, in 1907 -- one of the many house cookbooks that confectioners and flour millers issued to keep their product in the kitchen. That a book of this kind includes instructions for plain toast tells you something about its audience: young housekeepers with a new chafing dish and no inherited technique. The chafing dish was near the peak of its American vogue in the 1900s, a small spirit-lamp affair used for late suppers, bachelor cooking and after-theatre entertaining, and nearly everything made in one -- rarebit, creamed oysters, lobster Newburg -- was ladled over toast. Distinguishing dry toast from buttered toast and from milk toast was standard usage of the period; "dry" simply meant nothing was added after browning.