Toast Wars

There are several points I would like to make in this post, the first—but by no means the most important—is that finding amusing differences between the US and the UK is becoming a bit difficult. Having been here six years, I think it's normal to see Marmite on the supermarket shelves and occasionally find the market square filled with men dressed in knickerbockers, feathers and jingle-bells prancing around and hitting at each other with big sticks. Thankfully circumstances, even now, occasionally conspire to illuminate certain oddities, such as the Brits not knowing what a 'John Hancock' is or their inability to recognize a Charlie Horse if it bit them in the leg.

So it is with the subject of this post: soon after arriving in Britain, I began to notice a curious item on the table in many restaurants. The locals referred to it as a toast rack, but in reality it merely served as an efficient toast cooler. I grudgingly accepted its presence and occasionally thought of posting about it but wasn't sure if they existed in America and I simply hadn't been paying attention. Recently, however, "Lynneguist" of Separated by a Common Language posted about this curiosity and sparked a debate that might lead you to believe any possible war between the US and UK won't be about foreign policy or the Kyoto Protocol, but over the 'proper' way to serve toast.

Turns out—and how I managed to live here all this time and not have figured this out on my own is a complete mystery—that the British have such a phobia about soggy toast that they invented this little gadget to neatly separate each slice, allowing all residue humidity to escape, thereby ensuring each piece will be crispy, free of dampness and, naturally, stone cold. This latter bit they don't seem to mind; they appear perfectly content to sacrifice heat as long as it guarantees an absence of moisture.

I (and most Americans, it seems) don't like cold toast, and remain willing to risk a bit of accumulated condensation by stacking or covering the slices to keep them warm. In fact, to my thinking, toast should be just a bit moist, like a fresh baked biscuit.

Now, saying I don't like cold toast is, perhaps, not stating my case forcefully enough, so let's put it another way: liking cold toast is a physical impossibility as it does not exist. Cold toast is an oxymoron, like "Microsoft Works." Toast, by its very definition, is warm. Once it cools, it is just a rock-hard and unappealing slice of burnt, processed wheat that at one time in its unhappy life had been toast. What appears in the cooling rack during breakfast is, well, I don't know what it is, but I know it isn't toast.

This is where the line is drawn, and it appears even the best efforts of Neville Chamberlain would fail to achieve peace in our time (not that he was brilliant at it while he was alive, mind you); on the one side, the Brits, insisting that toast should be crispy and dry, on the other, the Americans, strident in their belief that it has to be warm, and pushing us closer toward breakfast Armageddon is the waitress, proffering plates of butter pats they appear to store alongside the liquid nitrogen.

I may be a bit biased here, but I believe the arguments put forward by Brits in favor (or favour, if you prefer) of the toast rack and against stacking are specious, at best. "If you eat it quickly, it will be warm," they say. Yes, but only if it arrives at your table while still warm. And by the same token, a stack of toast, if eaten promptly, will not have a chance to become soggy. (And if this condition is so anathema to the British, how then did they develop a penchant for pouring baked beans over their toast?)

So, as you can see, when it comes to serving toast, the Americans are clearly right and the British undeniably wrong.

When you take into account the fact that my wife and I eat toast for breakfast practically every morning on the weekends, it's a bit surprising this issue never came to light prior to this. It seems we escaped confrontation only because our morning toast comes straight out of the toaster and is buttered immediately. We also benefit from using a soft, yellowish, looks-sort-of-like-butter-but-might-not-kill-you-as-quickly type of concoction that, unlike the blocks of yellow ice popular in restaurants, spreads quickly and easily and doesn't require you to chisel butter shavings onto your toast.

It was a false truce, however, and once the subject was broached the discussion did not progress far before it became apparent that, despite six years of marital bliss, we sat firmly on opposite sides of the toast fence.

I'm not saying we approached anything like 'irreconcilable differences' but for breakfast the next morning, we had pancakes.