This Toast to Toast Covers Everything There Is to Know About a Beloved Staple
The fact of the matter is, toast is a pretty dry subject—that is until you start to ask some more in-depth questions. For example, “Where did toast come from?” and, “Who invented Toast?” While these ideas may not strike you as pertinent, now that they have been brought to your attention, these questions (and others) might keep you wondering until you find the answers.
This article will help you get your answers faster than you realized. Below, is a host of the remarkable information you didn’t know you wanted to know about toast. Once you read through the data, you may look at toast differently and want to buy the best toaster you can to pay homage to this crunchy piece of history.
Toast Begins
Around 6,000 years ago, bread as we know it today was invented in Egypt. About 3,000 years ago, the closed oven was also created in Egypt. Leavened bread was heated in these closed ovens and would rise, then come out as a lighter and larger form of flatbread. The only problem the Egyptians had was how quickly the bread became hardened in the desert heat. Because of how hard it got (and how quickly it got there), it became challenging to eat.
This problem inspired the concept of toast. The toasting procedure was born out of a need to preserve, rather than as just a variation on a delicious piece of bread. By grilling or firing each side of the bread, the slices lasted longer (which is why French toast was made as well).
It wasn’t until the Roman Empire that the practice of toasting bread became popular as a side dish or recognized as a palatable breakfast. The word “toast” comes from the Latin word “tostum,” which means “burnt or scorch.”
The first bread was likely toasted by setting bread in front of a fire on a hot stone.
It wasn’t until 1893 that the first electric toaster was used. While Scotsman Alan MacMasters had a good idea in mind, his invention wasn’t extremely popular. The iron wires he used to “toast” the bread, would often melt, which created a fire hazard. Plus, electricity wasn’t as widespread as it is today.
The Better Electric Toaster
In Chicago in 1905, two inventors created an alloy that was fire-resistant. This meant that people could have toast in a safer, more accessible, and more effective way. This new toaster would only toast one side of the bread at a time, and while it didn’t take a long time to do its job, you would have to flip your bread to the other side to get both sides toasted.
Many Versions of the Toaster
Each year, starting in 1913 and for many years after, there were new inceptions of the toaster. While the early stages of the toaster had you flipping your toast, the automatic toast turner of 1913 was a game-changer for those who liked to eat toast and wanted it quickly. The cool thing was that the automatic toast turner not only turned your toast on its own, but it also switched the heating element off after the bread was finished toasting.
It wasn’t until 1919 that toast began to pop up, and the toaster became more of what we know it as today.
Nothing Is Better Than Sliced Bread
Toast hit its stride after Otto Fredrick Rohwedder invented pre-sliced bread. While it took Rohwedder about ten years to perfect the sliced-bread process (the first plans and physical pre-slicers got lost in a fire in 1917), the pre-sliced, uniformly cut pieces were an easy meal to pop into the toaster, eat up, and go.
Rohwedder’s invention was set up in a bakery, and in 1928, W.E. Long pioneered the packaging of sliced bread. W.E. Long was a salesman who started this packaging promotion through small bakeries around the country. Two years later, Wonder Bread’s prepacked, sliced bread was born.
Fast Facts and Toasty Terms
- The “Buttered Toast Phenomenon”: Buttered toast almost always falls buttered-side down when someone drops it (accidentally or on purpose). This phenomenon happens because buttered toast is in a person’s hand with the butter side up. When they drop it, it tends to be between a two- to six-foot drop. The toast only has time to make a half rotation before it hits the ground. This means that the buttered side will almost always land “face” down. The butter has little weight to affect the outcome of the fall.
- Eighty-eight percent of Americans own an electric toaster.
- French Toast isn’t actually toast. To make French toast, you dip your toast in an egg coating, then fry it. Neither of these actions denotes “toast” as it is known to us today.
- Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon in Canada, found a “Toast Center” in the human brain. This center is dedicated to detecting the smell of burnt toast.
Conclusion
As it stands, toast has an interesting history, and now that you know more about toast, you may begin to look at it differently. Think about how it started in Egypt as a way to preserve bread, the different inceptions of the toaster, and then the invention of sliced bread! This journey gives toast an exciting end that may not know any bounds.
Resources— H2G2, Hagley, Today I Found Out
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