Monday, March 31, 2008
Crunch Munch
One of the things that always catchs me by surprise in life is those times you realise you've been missing something you hadn't known.
Take toast for example (yes I said toast). We've had the same toaster for a very long time. I also bake most of our bread. For toast I do this fairly yummy oatmeal bread (a mix of flours and rolled oats). Its a surprisingly light bread.
However, it never toasted very well. We'd put it in a couple of times and it would dry out nicely and make perfectly good toast. Dry, nice texture, just not overly brown.
Then recently our aged toaster packed it in. Just stopped working. I checked the fuses and what wiring I could get at, but no luck. Tinkers don't exist any more and any decent electrician who would even look at the job would charge far more than the cost of a new toaster. Its perverse, but that is our modern world.
So I went out and bought one of these. A thing of functional beauty. Yesterday, with a fresh loaf of bread we road tested it. What came out was astonishing. Brown and crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. The flavour was even improved. It was a marvelous realisation. I'd had the toaster from before I started making bread. I'd always thought it was the bread. I never knew toast could be like this!
Sometimes, just sometimes you can blame the tool...
Take toast for example (yes I said toast). We've had the same toaster for a very long time. I also bake most of our bread. For toast I do this fairly yummy oatmeal bread (a mix of flours and rolled oats). Its a surprisingly light bread.
However, it never toasted very well. We'd put it in a couple of times and it would dry out nicely and make perfectly good toast. Dry, nice texture, just not overly brown.
Then recently our aged toaster packed it in. Just stopped working. I checked the fuses and what wiring I could get at, but no luck. Tinkers don't exist any more and any decent electrician who would even look at the job would charge far more than the cost of a new toaster. Its perverse, but that is our modern world.
So I went out and bought one of these. A thing of functional beauty. Yesterday, with a fresh loaf of bread we road tested it. What came out was astonishing. Brown and crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. The flavour was even improved. It was a marvelous realisation. I'd had the toaster from before I started making bread. I'd always thought it was the bread. I never knew toast could be like this!
Sometimes, just sometimes you can blame the tool...
