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Dry Toast
Cut stale bread in one-fourth inch slices. Crust may or may not be removed. Put slices on wire toaster, lock toaster and place over clear fire to dry, holding some distance from coals; turn and dry other side. Hold nearer to coals and color a golden brown on each side. Toast, if piled compactly and allowed to stand, will soon become moist. Toast may be buttered at table or before sending to table.
This is toast made over an open coal fire, and the method carries one genuinely useful idea that electric toasters obscure: drying first, browning second.
- The hinge: dry, then colorThe whole point of holding the bread well away from the coals at first is to drive off moisture through the slice before the surface browns. A pop-up toaster tends to do the opposite, coloring the outside while the middle stays damp. To follow the method, dry the slices through in a low oven first, then brown them briefly under a hot broiler or in the toaster.
- Stale bread is specified for a reasonDay-old bread has lost enough water to toast evenly and holds a quarter-inch slice without tearing. Fresh soft sandwich bread will steam rather than crisp.
- Slice thicknessOne-fourth inch is thinner than most commercial sliced bread, which runs closer to a half inch. Cut it yourself from a firm white loaf if you want the brittle, dry result the recipe intends.
- Wire toasterA hinged wire broiler basket with a long handle, held over the coals by hand. A folding camp toaster or a broiler rack does the same job; so does a grill grate over a wood fire that has burned down to embers.
- "Clear fire"Coals burning steadily without flame or smoke. Flames deposit soot and scorch the surface before the interior dries, which is presumably why the recipe specifies a clear fire rather than simply the fire.
- Do not stack itThe remark about piling toast compactly is the practical heart of the entry: steam trapped between slices undoes the drying. Stand the slices upright in a rack rather than stacking them; keeping toast dry is one of the things a toast rack is for.
Dry toast is generally treated as a category of its own in period bread cookery because it was less a snack than a building block: the base for creamed chipped beef, poached eggs, milk toast and the invalid trays often said to have been a fixture of Victorian and Edwardian households. Toast was long considered easy on the stomach, and cookbooks of this period are often said to distinguish dry toast from buttered toast, milk toast and water toast, each with a slightly different job in the sickroom or at breakfast. The instruction to hold the bread at a distance from the coals belongs to the era of the coal range with its open firebox and its rack of wire hand-toasters; electric toasters are generally thought to have been only beginning to appear in American kitchens around this time, and the technique they replaced was the one described here, drying the slice through before coloring it.