Be Excellent To Each Other

Every single breakfast cereal ad, or indeed any other lifestyle ad which somehow features breakfast, always has a toast rack on the table. But I only associate toast racks with cold, soggy, hotel toast. Surely toast should be buttered, condimented, and eaten as soon as humanly possible?

Do you agree? I mean, seriously, what average family home has a toast distribution problem of such severity that it must be solved with a piece of dedicated hardware?

I have used one. But not for toast.

I can't for the life of me remember what I did use it for, but I remember saying "That's the first time I have ever used a toast rack, and it wasn't even for toast!"

It will come to me...

That is most intriguing.

Thing is, hotel toast is often really nice for some reason. Often because it's just that bit different to home toast. I wouldn't want hotel toast at home but it works in hotels. Here's a vaguely interesting story:

I once stopped in the Euston Square hotel in London and their breakfast system was quite confusing. You were given a list with boxes in next to the food items for you to specify how many of each item you wanted. They neglected to mention that 'toast' was to be 'rack of toast' so there were confused waitresses running around everywhere with huge piles of toast wondering why no one wanted it.

I sometimes like my toast cold, so the butter keeps its form and stays cool. For this, I guess a toast rack would work, but I prefer to arrange my slices into a house-of-cards formation to cool them; if you leave them flat, the condensation builds up and makes the bread soggy.

But then, I also love hot toast buttered straight away so it just melts into a pool of golden goodness.

Delia says you should leave the toast in a toast rack. Personally I like warm toast.

See, to me toast racks present a conundrum:

Pro: Toast from a toast rack is crunchy and deliciously tasty.
Con: Apart from the first two bites it is stone cold, and that is assuming it has been delivered immediately.

But in hotels this doesn't matter. As you can endlessly demand more as what you have is cold! ;-)

And I have only ever used toast racks in hotels. At home I eat warm, soggy toast with margarine.

A toast rack stops the toast from going soggy, because otherwise the heat from the toast against a cold plate causes condensation to appear between the two and soggies the bread - toast racks actually keep the toast crisper.

i have a toast rack but I don't like toast.

I bought it because it was in the shape of a duck and 10p at the charity shop.

I'll use it one day. Maybe.

I've not got a toast rack, but I use them at my parents' and grandparents' houses.

We've got one, but it's only for camping where you hold the bread over your camping stove and it toasts it.

I just read the thread title as "Have you ever been willingly used as a toast rack?"

Well, have you?

*pulls gun out* FUCK YOUR TOAST!

No. Toast racks fuck off. Go on FUCK OFF

Chafing!

Another reason why toast is evil! GET YOUR RACKISH ARSE BACK TO TOASTRACKANIA WHERE YOU BELONG!

You don't like toast either? I thought I was the only one.

I have used one on numerous occasions, but don't own one. It is, as always, in the details. I like my toast crisp, not soggy, so though I don't own a toast rack I always pull my toast from the toaster and prop the two slices against each other to cool "enough" to allow the moisture to dissipate but not for the toast to go cold.

The butter needs to be the right temperature as well - not straight from the fridge.

I have been informed by a professional butler that banging the slices together like cymbals immediately after they are toasted has a similar effect in stopping them going soggy, but I haven't tried it.

Soggy toast is the food of non-gentlemen.

Toast is fucking awesome. Toast racks are ok in hotels but there's clearly no need to ever use one in the home.

Toast is very boring once you start on muffins. And is there such a thing as a muffin rack? NO! Rack-B-GONE.

Booze-be-gone, more like.

I certainly prefer hot toast over cold toast, even if it is a bit floppy. You can shove your meringue-textured cold toast up your crevice, pal.

Oddly, I don't like the butter on my toast to be at all visible, which is perhaps why I'm not bothered about flip-flopping.

And that post on its own can debunk the myth that toast is "dry" without anything on it. One of those little things that bugs me, when people talk about 'dry' bread or toast. It isn't, really, is it?

I used to not like toast, but then realised I was insane*. It's very nice (and indeed, when I'm left alone to fend for myself accounts for an awful lot of my diet.)

* - Well, actually, no - I realised my mother can't cook, and toast isn't supposed to be entirely black. See also: Everything else my mother cooks. Cabbage should not be liquid after cooking

Toast is lush. Toast is a cheap, tasty snack. Even rubbish bread can make nice toast.

All hail toast.

I especially like shreddy marmalade on mine, or blackcurrent conserve. Yum. And a nice cup of tea. As for the question of 'should you use a toast rack or not', I have observed Jeeves in Jeeves & Wooster use them, so that's good enough for me.

Though I don't own one, so I'll have to answer no.

You're supposed to pour it into a cup first.

Excellent poll.

I like my toast warm, hot if possible, I like to put the butter/marge on as soon as possible eat it as soon as it has butter (and ideally marmite too) is on. Leaving toast to stand around is silly. You may as well just buy that french toast or something.

Malc

Not to my knowledge.

Only in hotels have I ever used them. And even then it's rare, as I'm too busy eating all the bacon and fried bread from the breakfast buffet, and spreading peanut butter on my pancakes.

It's starting to come back to me...it might have involved DIY...

Toast is awesome but I hardly ever eat the bloody stuff, for some bizarre reason.

The other important question regarding toast of course - do you do your toast in a toaster or do you use your oven's grill and turn it over at the appropriate time?

The former if I'm making just toast, the latter if I'm putting cheese on it.



You are me. Fiver, please.

And you say you aren't American! This could only be more American if you drove 25 miles in a Humvee to get it whilst firing a rifle into the air at random.

Grill, I don't own a toaster. Quite often if I'm doing toast for the family, I need half a dozen rounds of bread, so short of some sort of commercial thing I need to use the grill anyway. I stopped owning toasters years ago. I prefer using the grill anyway, the toast comes out hotter.

No, but I was used as the net (and scorekeeper) in a game of table tennis in Crete. There's a video of it and everything. Wouldn't happen now, of course, because the little known TERROR-PAEDO EVIL COMMUNIST SCUMS PLAYS TENNIS WITH INNOCENT CHILD SHOCK SHAME EVIL TERROR Act would make everyone in the vicinity a legally binding child molester.



It's true. But the thing is, everything at breakfast is lovely in hotels (and doubly so in a B&B). Even when they use exactly the same source of milk and juice and bread and such as you, it's somehow magically transformed into a thing of deliciousness. Hotel breakfasts are among the best and most pleasing of human experiences.

And more burnt, in my experience.

I just ate some toast and thought of The Gaywood. You fucking fucking fucking bastard.

We need more details of what you thought before the triple-fucking is justified. Gaywood on his own is not *that* offensive.

Has someone taken away your dictionary, Dimrill? all you do swear recently

Only when it's toast related. Toast. Even the word looks wrong.

Not as wrong as 'toddler', mind.

I love toast so much I'll even occasionally eat it raw.

Three weeks into life at halls I ended up letting a fat second year lass take me home because she had a toaster and since leaving my mother's kitchen, I'd been subsisting on the horrible mass-toasted toast in the refectory, which was shite.

Fair play to her, she gave me as much toast as I could eat. And she had a nice rack....

I can just picture her squashing herself into her sexiest nightie and trying to act all amourous as you sit there, indifferent to her, chewing your way through an enormous pile of hot toast with yet more toast just popping up out of the toaster in the background.

It's this bit that makes it extra funny. Watch and learn BBC 3 Comedy Writers.

I grew up with a toast rack. It was a cold brother, indeed.

Useful for family breakfast, as multiple rounds of toast can be deployed (usually by mother) and grabbed at will by famished hands.

hugh, your avatar still makes me feel all fluttery.

You may have a hummingbird in your ear.

Oh, yeah, I did!

Thanks Dr. Hugh!

BBC3 has comedy writers? When did that happen?