On Toast
By Sarah Smallwood

Breakfast menus have long been a thorn in my side. I adore a stack of pancakes or French toast as much as the next person—no, actually far more than the next person—but will there be shopping later? Immediately following? Will I need to move and be self-aware, or can I collapse into a maple-saturated coma? Easing this indecision between the light menu and the diabetic gauntlet is that universal breakfast rule, the gimmie for the ages: with any order, you get toast.

“Just the bread,” I assert.

“What, so dry toast?”

“No… untoasted. The bread minus the toaster.”

“Lightly toasted? Is that what you mean?”

“Could you bring me the loaf and a serrated knife, please?”

Because I don’t like toast.

I wouldn’t have thought that such a small personal preference could be so divisive. People can’t get their heads around it, apparently it’s an odd thing not to like. I’ve longed been plagued by the fallacious argument “How do you not like toast? Isn’t it just hot bread?” No, it’s not: Hot bread is bread right from the oven. Toast is crusty bread. Dry bread. It takes a beautiful thing and burns it.

I don’t like toast. Because I love, love, love bread.

There is nothing so perfect as a loaf of good bread. I love the feel of it, the sponginess, the pockets and troughs and the contrasting natural crunch of the crust. Homemade bread should be eaten soft, warm, and unadulterated by condiments. Slicing is even optional; I’ve eaten many of my grandmother’s homemade loaves in torn hunks while watching "You Can’t Do That on Television." If she offered to slice it, I wouldn’t turn her down, but toasting? Butter? Jam? I could never understand. Why drown out the salt, the yeast, the sugary crust with the faint taste of cardamom that she swore she never added? All these nuances are lost, turned to carbon when placed inside the Temple-of-Doom steel cage of the toaster.

I woke up one morning in the UK, hungover, sitting at a friend’s kitchen table as she prepared breakfast before we tottered to class. I asked her why the rungs were so close together on her napkin holder, thinking it was some typical English tidiness design to keep the napkins from spilling. She laughed, and told me it was a toast rack. I stared at it, this thing, this tangible object that stood for all the differences between our two countries. Something to make toast colder and stale—something, in short, to hasten and exacerbate all the worst points of toast. My friend deposited a cup of tea and two slices of honeyed toast before me, for which I was grateful—because, while I don’t like toast, I love the hell outta honey.

Which is something else I’ve never understood: If you must adorn your bread with your clotted creams and pumpkin butters, why put it through the hellish torture of toasting it first? When toasted, this delicate tapestry goes from a duvet to a raft, losing the vital elasticity necessary for filling each pocket with buttery goodness. It is the lowest form of insult to demote bread to a cracker’s work, only as a platform for cheeses and specialty preserves. Pumpernickel and chive cream cheese is art; toasted Wonder loaf and fig jam is prostitution. And why not put these accessories to better use on a scone or a muffin, and leave the bread for midday munching?

It is harder than you can imagine to get a toast-free breakfast. Eggs and toast, yes. Eggs, bacon and toast, surely. Eggs, waffles, biscuits, side of beef, pork loin smothered in country gravy with toast, but of course. This leads to long and involved discussion with the waiter whether I can substitute a short stack for the carb portion, because asking for the toast untoasted is a nightmare that quickly devolves into a Monty Python sketch:

“So… you want raw bread?”

“It’s not raw bread—it’s been baked!”

“I can do the pancakes, but it still comes with toast.”

“I DON’T LIKE TOAST!”

Because I don’t, okay? I don’t like toast. I don’t go into the particular preferences of your daily diet, so back offa mine and bring me a flippin’ biscuit, already. Or a cinnamon roll. Or the banana loaf you bake twice daily. And if you offer specialty breads—with the cranberries and walnuts and cinnamon swirls—please act completely mystified when I prefer them virgin, without the charred ends and crisped dried fruits tearing holes in my soft palate. Thanks so much.

This is not to say I’m against toasters altogether, just the toasting of bread. I am a raving bagel fan, eating them toasted with cream cheese, or peanut butter and raisins. There is no better was to make a Pop Tart.

But put my challah near that thing and they’ll never find any part of you.

——

Sarah Smallwood doesn’t like ice cream because it melts. She can be reached through her long-documented salute to ennui, The Other Shoe. She lives in Michigan.

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