Toast Day

What the day is

Toast Day is observed on the last Thursday in February, celebrating toasted bread. It began in 2014, created by the Tiptree World Bread Awards in the UK. Almost everything that goes wrong with toast is a question of where the water went.

Origin and background

Start with staling, which is not simply drying out. Bread goes stale through starch retrogradation: the starch molecules, disordered by baking, gradually recrystallize and in doing so lock up water that was previously free, so the crumb turns firm and dry even in a sealed bag. This is why bread staling is slower at room temperature than in a refrigerator, where the process runs fastest, and why the refrigerator is the worst place to keep a loaf.

Heat partially reverses it. Warming stale bread past roughly sixty degrees Celsius melts those crystals and releases the water again, which is why toast made from day-old bread comes out better than toast made from a fresh slice: the fresh slice has more free moisture to drive off before the surface can brown at all.

Browning itself is the Maillard reaction between sugars and amino acids, and it needs a dry surface, which is the other half of the same story. The surface dries, then browns, while the interior stays soft because the moisture leaving it has to pass through.

That escaping steam is why toast goes limp on a plate. Laid flat, the steam is trapped underneath and condenses back into the slice. Stood upright in a rack, it escapes, which is the entire purpose of a toast rack.

One practical note: acrylamide, a compound formed during high-temperature browning of starchy foods, increases sharply with darker toasting. Food safety bodies advise aiming for golden rather than dark brown.

How to take part

• Use day-old bread. It genuinely makes better toast than fresh.
• Keep bread at room temperature or frozen, never in the refrigerator.
• Toast frozen slices straight from the freezer, on a longer setting.
• Stand it in a rack, or lean it, so the steam can escape.
• Aim for golden rather than dark brown.