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Toast and Toasters

Excuse me, Tom, but if I have a weakness it is for Yarmouth bloaters, anchovy toast, milk, chocolate, marmalade, hot rolls, and reindeer tongue * * *.-Lever a Tom Burke.

I have remarked before that not one person in a thousand knows how to make good toast. The simplest dishes seem to be the ones oftenest spoiled. If, as is generally done, a thick slice of bread is hurriedly exposed to a hot fire, and the exterior of the bread is toasted nearly black, * * etc. Henderson. There, you see, boys and girls, you had better make that toast right and not jam it down on the hot range top with gnashing of teeth so savagely. Not one in a thousand of you but knows how to make toast beautifully, but you have an invincible aversion to it; you think a person who will order toast a monster, that to be hated needs but to be seen; you want to know why such people can't eat all these nice hot breads and batter cakes, and you call them pet names which it will never do to put in print.

Of course you think it the cook's business to make toast, but that depends on circumstances, for toast must be made just as it is ordered, and one of the cooks is busy broiling beefsteak and ham to order and another is busy dishing up side dishes and frying fresh potatoes. Baking cakes and waffles and dishing up breads keeps another agoing, so a mebody besides must make the toast. The vegetable cook might be hired with the understanding that toast making was one of the duties to be performed, and would do well at supper, but the two or three hours of breakfast is the vegetable cook's busiest time. It would not be so hard to make good toast if there was a place provided for it when the hotel kitchen is furnished and fitted up, but whoever in such a case ever thinks of that? Put it upon the cook and he must almost perforce bake the toast by panfuls in the oven, but no persons, if they can help themselves, will eat that except as milk toast. The broiler is full and has no room but for meats There is only the range top left available and that must be kept so hot that there is little chance of being able to do good baking inside at the same time.Charcoal broiler aside from the meat work would be placed in every hotel kitchen at the first, when such expenses are not so reluctantly incurred as after some time of scrambling along without.

In hotels where the toast difficulty is well over-come there is either an extra hand from some other department appointed for the duty, and the toast range or broiler to work on, or else, in smaller houses where the dining room work is not rushing, the waiters themselves, preparing a little toast just before he doors are opened for a start, are able to make it as wanted, and to suit the special orders.

The best way where there is no special broiler, is to provide half a dozen wire hinged oyster broilers or toasters and lay them with the bread in them on top of the hot range.