Burnt Toast with Smoke and Motion Blur Popping from Toaster
One random night at dinner my son said something about how I only eat burnt toast. One comment opened up a floodgate and everyone piled on….”OMG, I have totally noticed that mom always burns her toast,” “So funny, her toast is like charcoal with melted butter,” and so on. There is a reason I prefer my toast well done and it is so obvious to someone who has been on a gluten-free diet as long as I have.
Back in the stone-age era of gluten-free food, bread was made of, only joking of course, but I swear it seemed like bread was made with asbestos. I could set the toaster to the “en fuego” setting and the bread would not even turn a shade of golden brown or even a slightly beige tinge. I could toast it for three days, and while it might have the consistency of a brick, it would still be a pale white color.
It drove me crazy and I used to jack up the toaster setting and then repeat the cycle three or four times just to get a little color. I like the toasted flavor, and if I were honest about it, I actually like the burnt flavor. Maybe I liked the burnt edges because it was damn near impossible to achieve and maybe because yesteryear’s gluten-free bread was so horrible tasting.
Flash forward to today and gluten-free bread tastes really good and achieves some color if you set it to medium dark and run the bread through one toasting cycle…but I still sometimes run it through twice or set the color to “dark” and let it rip. Now I have a reputation and something that my kids will laugh about long after I’m gone…”Remember how mom always ate burnt toast? She was such a lovable weirdo…”
Kendall Egan
