January 18, 2001
Queen of Toast
So, I found these crumpets, see? I went
to Everybody’s market in Cheshire, Connecticut, and they had crumpets in the bread
aisle. They are excellent! Now my life is all about crumpets. How many crumpets are left?
When will I get my next one? I have a crumpet for breakfast. I take one to work for a
snack. I toast one when I come home from work. Is it time for another crumpet yet?
The crumpet is the perfect breakfast
bread – kind of like a cross between a pancake and an English muffin. It’s a
little round cake, made of flour and yeast. One side is smooth, like a pancake, and the
other side has holes, like an English muffin. When it’s made, it is cooked on a
griddle (like a pancake) rather than baked (like a muffin). When you eat it, you toast the
crumpet, then put the butter on the side with the holes. It seeps down into the crevices,
turning the whole thing into a scrumptious, buttery morsel. You can also add jam or honey,
if you want to send yourself into absolute paroxysms of hedonistic pleasure.
I don’t know if crumpets are more
widely available than they once were in the US, or if they’re just easier to find in
New England than they are in other regions. But I find them much more frequently here in
Connecticut than I ever did in Pennsylvania or Georgia.
When I can’t get crumpets, I fall
back on my all-time favorite, toast. As a bread lover, I revere all dishes made with
bread: sandwiches, bread pudding, dressing, strata (yum). But there is something so
perfect about the simple act of toasting, about what it does to bread. Hot toast is bread
at its finest. Even the most everyday loaves are uplifted by the process of toasting.
I will eat most any kind of toast, even
burnt toast. But my favorite toast is made with dense, finely-grained breads. White bread,
wheat bread, or anything in between, these heavier breads toast up beautifully and are
perfect for any kind of preserves or spreads. For the best toast, I like bakery bread,
homemade bread, or the firmer types of mass-market sliced breads. Pepperidge Farm makes a
very nice toasting loaf (it is sold as “toasting bread”). Softer breads, such as
Wonder and other standard American white breads, are too soft and full of holes to toast
to perfection. And their air holes make for a very rough exterior texture, which I’m
not so fond of.
The best thing about toast is that
it’s appropriate for any time of day or night. I’ve written before in this
journal about my love of toast for breakfast. But it is
perfect for a snack anytime, and you’re not likely to ruin your appetite before
dinner with toast. It’s also easy to make and hard to mess up, especially if you have
a toaster or a toaster-oven with a built in timer. Also, toast is endlessly versatile.
Although cheese toast and cinnamon toast are my favorites, there are millions of things
you can toast on bread or add to toast.
A final word. Most of all, toast is a
comfort food. Comfort foods tend to be made of the simplest ingredients, but their
simplicity is deceptive. The beauty of foods like mashed potatoes and homemade pot pie is
that, for many of us, they feed the soul as well as the body. Toast, I believe, is no
exception. |
