I know what you’re thinking/scoffing — “How tough can making toast be?” It goes beyond just sticking any piece of bread in a toaster and slathering the product in butter, believe it or not. At least according to the man behind $4 toast at a San Francisco restaurant, who probably knows his stuff if he’s charging that much for toasted bread and getting away with it.

Bon Appetit spoke with the man behind The Mill, Josey Baker, who just so happens to have taken on the profession destined by his name. And despite the fact that anyone can stick a piece of bread in the toaster and call it a day, you could be getting so much more out of the entire process, Baker explains.

1. Your ingredients matter: Apparently someone out there is telling people to use older bread for toast. That’s just wrong, Baker says — you should use the fresh stuff for the best result.

“You want the bread to still have a lot of life in it,” he explains. “What we’re doing when we toast the bread is creating that crispy crust on the outside, but inside of the toast there’s still all of that moistness of it being fresh.”

2. The thicker the slice, the tastier it’ll be: Slicing homemade bread in thicker slices will bring it from snack status to full on meal proportions. That way, the thickness lets the surface get crispy while the inside stays soft and tender, baker says.

3. Jack up the heat: Crank that puppy up — and by puppy we mean toaster oven. The idea here being you want to get a nice crust, akin to a steak.

4. Eat it while it’s hot: Letting toast sit around with butter on it will turn it into a soggy mess, as time and toast will wait for no man. Gobble it down as soon as it’s ready.

Check out the source link below for more toast tips, or just keep toasting the same way you have been forever and miss out on the whole new world of bread the rest of us will be enjoying as part of the enlightened class of consumers.

Toast So Awesome You Can Charge $4 a Slice [Bon Appetit]

Follow MBQ on Twitter for any further toast ruminations you might be seeking: @marybethquirk

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