Toasters can be a hot button topic

Hilde G. Lee Daily Progress correspondent
Published: September 23, 2008

One of our pet peeves when we travel and stay at a hotel or motel where breakfast is self-service is their toasters. One of the worst is the kind where a slice of bread is slowly propelled over and under electric coils. I think that type of toaster must be almost 100 years old, or so it seems.

I have stood in front of one of those contraptions and watch the bread slowly make three passes around the heating coils and still the bread was not toasted. Some of the other electric, more modern toasters we have encountered in motels take at least two cycles on “dark” to get the bread light tan.

Today we take toast for granted. Toast, when properly done, was one of the unsung accomplishments of early American cooking. It was a culinary art and one that took great patience.

Homemade bread

Early American toast most likely was made from homemade bread. This meant that the bread tasted generally of the grain from which the flour or meal was ground. The grain may have been inexpensive, the flour coarse, but the toast would have been done more or less in the same way — with a toasting fork over an open fire in the fireplace.

This simple article of food was one of the most commonly consumed and universally liked American quick snacks. The characteristic nutty flavor, the warm, crisp texture, the required color were all subtle degrees of perfection required of the person making the toast.

The handle of the wrought-iron toasting fork was about three feet long. In the more primitive back woods toasting forks were made of wooden branches, which did not last long.

Bread, whether made from wheat or corn, always has been one of the most important foods in this country. In early America, bread generally consisted of cornbread baked in a skillet or Dutch oven in the hearth. For many Colonists wheat bread and coffee were reserved for Sabbath mornings. The rest of the week they ate cornbread and drank rye coffee, which was made from grains of rye roasted and ground like coffee.

High status white

At the time the bread flour of choice was wheat, because white bread was equated with high social status. In reality, wheat was a cash crop for most farmers and corn was the grain of use. Furthermore, corn grew in many marginal places where wheat would not. “Middling bread,” or what we now call whole wheat bread, was the best grade of wheat bread that most people had on their table.

In reality, middling bread was made of wheat flour mixed with rye or cornmeal. This was also known as brown bread or “rye-and-Indian.” In most Colonial towns the proportion of meal and flour in

the mix and the weight of each loaf of bread was fixed by law.

In Colonial days all bread was sold by weight. Bakers often cheated and thus the “market sheriff” spent a lot of time checking for adulterations and strange ingredients designed to make loaves heavy.

Brown bread was poor man’s fare, but in New England it was equated with Puritan values and Yankee character. It eventually became a positive cultural symbol. Boston brown bread is much moister than the standard rye-and-Indian. However, there are as many recipes as there are opinions as to which is the most authentic.

As a type of bread, Boston brown bread is an old form of dark bread related to German pumpernickel. It is a true hearth bread because it is meant to be baked “down hearth, “ or in the ashes. It was a popular bread before separate brick ovens became part of fireplace cooking in New England in the mid-17th century. It made wonderful toast.

Brown bread was baked in a deep earthenware dish. Long, slow baking was characteristic for this bread, which took as much as five to six hours to bake.

In the middle states, where wheat flour was cheaper and more abundant, various types of wheat breads were popular. Bread baking in this region was generally done in brick bread ovens set away from the house as protection against fire.

In the South, common folk baked cornbread “down hearth,” hence the widespread use of the term ash cake. Actually, the bread was not put into the ashes but was spread on a board and set near the fire. When one side was finished baking, the flat bread was turned to finish the other side.

Before cookbooks became prevalent, recipes for many American breads were quite localized in character. For example, corn dodgers, small goose egg shaped corn breads baked in a skillet, were made with white meal and water in Kentucky. In milk-rich Ohio, they were made with sifted yellow cornmeal that was scalded with milk and thickened with sour cream.

Even pieces of cornbread, if they were firm enough, made excellent toast in early American days.