When they wake up and prepare breakfast, one of the first things millions (if not billions) of people around the world do is slip a couple of slices of bread into a toaster, before preparing the rest of their morning repast. However, the toast is almost always first because, to paraphrase a famous advertising slogan for orange juice, “a breakfast without toast is like a day without sunshine.”
While early electric toasters were a vast improvement over previous means of converting slices of bread into toast, they still had a long way to go before becoming the absolute go-to utensil required for composing the first meal of the day.
Because of the central role, it plays in human nutrition, and for numerous other reasons, I believe the electric toaster unquestionably deserves a place on the list of what I like to call “extraordinary ordinary things.”
Brief History of the Toaster
Toast is a quick and easy breakfast that can be eaten on the go, but it wasn’t always so.
Whereas making breakfast without toast today would be virtually unthinkable, this is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Before development of the electric toaster, hand-sliced bread had to be toasted on a long metal fork, or in a metal frame, held over a fire or on a gas stove. Possible, but hardly practical. However, when the first electric toaster came along at the end of the 19th century (1893 to be exact), all that changed.
Invention of the electric toaster was not simply the brilliant idea of some (until then) obscure inventor. It is the inevitable result of thousands of years of human development dating back virtually to prehistoric times.
Before you can toast bread, you first have to have bread. And according to archeological evidence, it seems likely mankind started making bread some 30,000 years ago. The first breads were “flatbreads,” i.e., thin, wide, and probably round (but not necessarily). These were used for simple meals, but also in Ancient Greece as offering to the gods during religious rituals.
Bread in the form of a “loaf” was probably invented in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians realized leavening bread dough (i.e., bread before it is baked) outside for a certain amount of time would cause it to rise because of yeast spores floating in the air. When baked placing it near to an open fire, these loaves of bread would maintain their risen shapes.
In Ancient Egypt, leavened (raised) bread was considered to be more pleasant to eat than flatbread. But leavened bread (bread loaf) had a distinct drawback. When not quickly consumed, it would become extremely hard and difficult to eat, i.e., it would go stale. This made bread loaves difficult to store. The solution to the problem? Toasting. Toasted bread loaves would remain edible much longer than untoasted loaves. Thus, it appears the Ancient Egyptians toasted their bread loaves not so much to make them tastier but rather to increase their longevity.
The practice of treating bread loaves this way was subsequently adopted by the Romans. The term “toast” is derived from the Latin word tostum, which loosely translated means to “scorch” or to “burn,” which is essentially what toasting does.
At first, it is most likely that bread was toasted by simply laying the loaf on a hot stone or placing it in front of a blazing fire. Subsequently, the Romanians invented a variety of other devices to toast bread on top of a fire, e.g., sticks like those that you use to your marshmallows over campfires and wireframes that would toast the bread slices more evenly.
When Scotsman Alan MacMasters invented the electric toaster in 1893, all that began to change. But not overnight, because MacMaster’s toaster was rudimentary, lacking a number of features that today would be considered a sine qua non. For example, it had no timer, it toasted only one side of the bread slice, and the results were often uneven. This meant someone had to monitor, flip, and remove the toast before it burned, which commonly happened. Moreover, the simple iron heating coil could melt, making the instrument a potential fire hazard.
In 1905 another Scotsman, Albert Mash, started working on the heating problem, and in place of iron, suggested using alloy made of nickel and chromium, which he patented under the name of nichrome. Nichrome had a higher resistance to fire than simple iron and was first used in a toaster just a year later in 1906. In 1913, the first electric toaster went on the market that when one side of the bread slice was toasted automatically turned it over to toast the other side.
In 1919, American Charles Strife started developing a toaster with a timer and a spring that popped the bread up when the set time had elapsed. He was granted a U.S. patent for the machine in 1921, which subsequently conquered toast lovers in America and much of the rest of the world.
Science of the Toaster
Putting bread in a toaster does more than darken its color and make it crispier. There is genuine science behind making toast, which designers and manufacturers of toasters need to consider when developing innovative new models.
Toasting bread is an example of the Maillard reaction. When heated up, the Maillard reaction enables certain sugars and proteins in the bread to bond. New molecules are formed, which in turn join forces, creating increasingly complex compounds to produce the characteristic brown color, texture, and flavor we know as toast. The Maillard reaction is also the source of deep flavors of browned barley in beer, roasted coffee, seared meats, and French fries.
Idioms with Toast
The words “toaster” and “toast” have given rise to numerous well-known idioms. But in citing them, we must be careful to make a definitional distinction.
The word “toast” has two distinct meanings. The more familiar one is probably the one related to preparing breakfast. The other very common one has nothing to do with preparing breakfast or food of any kind. As a verb (to toast), it means to propose a drink in recognition of someone or something, e.g., “Let’s all toast Mary’s incredible achievement.” As a noun, it means the recognition itself, e.g., “Here is a toast to Mary’s incredible achievement.”
But why does the word toast have this seemingly odd meaning?
The origin of the term is rather complex, but according to the 2023 edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it can roughly be summed up as follows:
The English word toast and the Spanish-derived tapas have something in common when it comes to libations. The word tapas in English refers to hors d’oeuvres served in a bar, and that meaning is derived from the Spanish noun tapa, meaning “cover” or “lid.” According to one account, Spanish barkeepers began covering their customers’ drinks with slices of bread (or meat) to keep dust or insects from entering. Hence, the first edible tapa was a food lid. Other stories abound, but this one brings to the table both food and drink, which the origin of toast, in the senses of toasting to someone’s health or drinking a toast to someone, does as well.
By extension, the honored person is can be called the toast, as in the famous American TV show “The Toast of the Town (1948–971), hosted by the iconic TV personality Ed Sullivan.
The person who presents the toast is often referred to as the “toastmaster.” George Albert “Georgie” Jessel (1898–1981) was an American actor, singer, songwriter, and film producer. But he became particularly well-known for playing the role of master of ceremonies in numerous honorific events, for which he became widely known by the nickname Toastmaster General of the United States.
In a like vein, the world’s largest club to promote better public speaking among non-professionals is known as Toastmasters International. With some 16,000 club chapters around the globe, at last count total Toastmaster Membership was rapidly approaching 360,000.
Here are a few more common idioms with toast.
warm as toast
Comfortably and cozily warm, especially when the weather outside is very cold.
be toast
To be in serious trouble; to be ruined, finished, or defeated
have on toast
Have power over someone (primarily used in the U.K., rare in the U.S.
French toast
Sliced bread soaked in a batter of beaten eggs and milk or cream, and then pan-fried. Alternative names and variants include “Bombay toast,” “eggy bread,” “gypsy toast,” etc. In France, it is known as pain perdu, literally “lost bread.” This is curious. Since it is normally made with stale bread, it would seem more appropriate to call it “found bread” or “recovered bread.”
milk toast
Used as both an adjective and a noun.
Adjective: extremely weak, timid, or ineffectual
Noun: someone (or perhaps something) that is extremely weak, timid, or ineffectual
A corruption of the name Casper Milquetoast, a comic book character who exhibited such traits. Milk toast is also a breakfast dish consisting of toasted bread in warm milk, typically with sugar and butter.
toasted
To be drunk.
be the toast of . . .
Be somebody who is praised lots of people, usually in a particular place, because of something that they have done especially well, e.g., the Toast of Broadway, the Toast of Hollywood, the Toast of New York, etc.
so toast
Wonderful, excellent, outstanding.
be toast
Burned, lost, doomed, done for
toast point
A triangular slice of bread that has been toasted after the crusts have been cut off. Commonly served as a side dish or as part of an hors d’oeuvre or snack with ingredients such as caviar or rillettes
Fun Facts about Toasters
- Pop-up toasters used to be frightfully expensive. This is hardly surprising. Almost every significant invention since the Industrial Revolution was offered to the public at an eyewatering selling price. However, as acceptance increased, so did production, resulting in economies of scale. When pop-up toasters first became available in the 1920s, they sold for about $25, which would be the equivalent of $400. Today, a century later, good-quality pop-up toasts still sell for about $35.
- Some toasters are small ovens, while industrial models toast bread on a conveyor belt-like mechanism, turning out 350-900 pieces of toast per hour.
- Toasters have been adapted to toast not only bread, but waffles, crumpets, and even hot dogs.
- There are many designs of household toasters, with different colors and shapes, as well as multiple toasting slots, with two slots being the most common, although four-slice toasters are not unusual.
- The Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.) has about 100 toasters from the 18th to 20th centuries on display in its exhibitions.
- Sliced bread, which did so much to make the toaster an indispensable household appliance, became available to consumers in 1933. Previously, store-bought bread loaves had to be hand-sliced at home. Today, it is a common expression to say, “This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.” It’s even better if that sliced bread is toasted.
- Americans (and probably many other peoples, as well) spend a significant amount of time toasting bread. It is estimated that an average American household that eats toast daily spends approximately 35 hours preparing the toast.
- The first toaster that could be controlled over the internet was invented in 1990.
- French toast is not really toast. Why? Because it is not the bread slice itself that gets toasted, but rather the egg coating covering the slice. Although offering crunchiness and a nice brown color, the bread is roasted in a pan, not put into a toaster. Incidentally, the French call French toast “pain perdu” (lost break)
Quotations about Bread, Toast, and Toasters
You can often learn a lot about the impact of an invention on society by listening to what people have said about its evolution and integration into daily life. A key reason the toaster has become so important in daily life is that the bread is toasted virtually defines daily life.
“Toast is bread made delicious and useful. Un-toasted bread is okay for children’s sandwiches and sopping up barbecue sauce, but for pretty much all other uses, toast is better than bread. An exception is when the bread is fresh from the oven, piping hot, with butter melting all over it. Then it’s fantastic, but I would argue that bread fresh out of the oven is a kind of toast.”—Steve Albini
“Toaster: a gift that every member of the family appreciates. Automatically burns toast.”—Dave Barry
“I often say to prospective clients, ‘Nothing will age faster than your hardware.’ Even the thinnest touch screen will look like a toaster oven in a number of years.”—Jake Barton
“You can give poor people this royal wedding to watch and make them feel good about themselves, or you can give them something useful like, I don’t know . . . a toaster.”—Bo Burnham
“Swing voters are more appropriately known as the ‘idiot voters’ because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of 14, you’re either a conservative or a liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster.”—Ann Coulter
“Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you’re more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark!”—Ted Danson
“But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn’t think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it’s quality that matters, not quantity.”—Thomas M. Disch
“There is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast.”—Charles Dickens
“The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.”—Thomas M. Disch
“Television is just another appliance. It’s just a toaster with pictures.”—Mark S. Fowler
“I don’t want to live my life in such a hurry that I’m always closing the fridge door with my foot and scribbling out birthday cards in my car at the last minute. I want to make bread, or at least find the time to toast it.”—Emily P. Freeman
“Virginia is the place where, technologically speaking, they will burn people at the stake for possessing such things as a toaster.”—Neil Gaiman
“In the long run, everything is a toaster.”—Bruce Greenwald
“Pepperidge Farm bread. That’s fancy bread. You can tell it’s fancy because it’s wrapped twice. You open it, and it still isn’t open. That’s why I don’t buy it. I don’t need another step between me and toast.”—Mitch Hedberg
“Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up every time.”—Alfred Hitchcock
“Our toaster has two settings: too soon or too late.”—Sam Levenson
“If you put a Ferrari sticker on a toaster, it doesn’t go any faster.”—Sergio Marchionne
“Of what value is a civilization that can’t toast a piece of bread as ordered?”—Haruki Murakami
“AI does not keep me up at night. Almost no one is working on conscious machines. Deep learning algorithms, or Google search, or Facebook personalization, or Siri or self-driving cars or Watson, those have the same relationship to conscious machines as a toaster does to a chess-playing computer.”—Ramez Naam
“My interest in theater really began in the ’70s when American realism wasn’t really in favor. I really dreaded going into a play that had a toaster that worked. I just didn’t want to see that.”—Bill Pullman
“I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”—Joan Rivers
“The only reason I wanted ‘Making Toast’ as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there’s the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.”—Roger Rosenblatt
“I never got that show, Les Miz (Les Miserables). It’s about the French guy, right, who steals a loaf of bread, and then he suffers for the rest of his life. For Toast. Get over it!”—Paul Rudnick
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some toast, Phyllis? Toast is one of the triumphs of our civilisation. It must be made with very fresh bread, thickly cut; then toasted very quickly and buttered at once, so the butter is half-melted. Unsalted butter, of course; you sprinkle it with salt afterward. Sea salt, preferably.”—Fay Weldon
“If I were to produce a kitchen appliance, I have to do more safety testing and go through more compliance procedures to create a toaster than to create Facebook.”—Christopher Wylie
Proverbs
“No one will give a pauper bread, but everybody will give him advice.”—Armenian
“You can’t fill your belly painting pictures of bread.”—Chinese
“When you have only two dollars left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one and a rose with the other.”—Chinese
“If fools ate no bread, corn would be cheap.”—Dutch
“Never fall out with your bread and butter.”—English
“Make bread while the oven is hot.”—Iranian
“A piece of bread in your pocket is better than a feather in your hat.”—Swedish
“Love is like butter; it’s good with bread.”—Yiddish
“Give me, Lord, my daily bread, I will get my own brandy.”—Yiddish
“If you drop a piece of toast, it will always land buttered-side down.”—Universal
This proverb gives rise to a conundrum. If toast always lands butter-side down, and a cat always lands on its feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it? Worth thinking about.
The Toaster in Computing
The term “toaster” has found a comfortable home in computing and computer science.
It was originally used to describe outdated or slow hardware. Today it is more commonly used to describe a product made up of hardware and/or software components in an easily used package. Toaster may also refer to a self-contained software package made up of several software components that were not originally packed together. Two common examples are:
- Video toaster. A single package containing all the hardware and software components of a desktop video editing system for creating broadcast-quality videos.
- Intranet toaster. A complete all-in-one server for small businesses. It is easily connected to a local area network (LAN) and may be configured with any of several internet browsers. Consistent with the “toaster” moniker, the server is less powerful than a complete Unix or Windows NT server but can be easily and conveniently installed.
Like countless millions (or perhaps billions) of other people, computer scientists and programmers venerate the toaster because they simply can’t imagine starting their day without it. However, they also have a very particular reason for appreciating it. The toaster has played a primordial role in the development of the internet in general and the Internet of Things (IoT) in particular.
IoT of course refers to the concept of connecting an endless variety of everyday objects to the internet, such as kitchen appliances and smartphones all the way to citywide infrastructure systems and military vehicles. The underlying idea is that widespread sharing of open data and the interconnected nature of everyday objects could usher in new levels of efficiency and augmentation of everyday life.
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in conjunction with Taiwan Excellence produced a three-part series on IoT, which opened with “The Toaster that Changed the World.”
Certainly, IoT is something of which the general public should be aware. But why choose the title “The Toaster that Changed the World”? For two reasons:
- First, it is a much catchier title to attract general viewers than “The Internet of Things and How It Will Affect Daily Life,” “IoT, the Acronym for a Coming Technological Revolution,” or some other such prosaic title.
- Second, it has more than a grain of truth in it.
As the text explained:
In 1990, the information and telecommunications industry was in its infancy. Only three million people, sharing 300,000 computers, had access to the internet. The first, brick-sized mobile phones stored a handful of numbers: they might have enabled an hour’s conversation, but offered neither color, motion, or information. Mark Zuckerberg was six years old; Sergey Brin was still in high school; Tim Berners-Lee had just laid out his vision for a worldwide web.
Then at a networking conference named Interop, in San Jose, California, engineers John Romkey and Simon Hackett demonstrated a slice of the future: a Sunbeam toaster hooked up to the new-fangled internet. For all its unsightly tangle of wire, it had just one control that switched the power on and off—a year later the engineers would add a miniature crane to maneuver the bread into place.
Yet that humble toaster was, in a way, the shape of things to come, a forerunner of today’s Internet of Things (IoT), the web of connections that links and empowers everyday objects and transforms them into digital devices with a power far greater than the sum of their parts.
But why demonstrate the connectivity potential of the internet with a toaster? As John Romkey has shared, “A toaster seemed like a good choice for physical control because it was a simple appliance that everyone could relate to, and it had the joint elements of fun and suspense as part of its function. Also, it seemed that people might understand toaster automation better than more abstract industrial automation.”
Although he didn’t say it, one could easily surmise that another key reason for choosing a toaster is that people simply love toast and can’t imagine starting each new day without it. What better symbol for the start of a brand-new phase in the history of human technology?
Where Do We Go From Here?
As long as people love toast (and there is no reason to believe this will change), and as long as they love convenience (there is also no reason to believe this will change), the toaster will continue to evolve.
There is something else that people today seem to love (much more than in previous eras), which is pin-point individuality. That is, they want things done to cater to their own particular tastes and desires. It is not enough for something to be done well in general, it must be done exactly as one wants it to be done.
However, this leads to somewhat of a conundrum because people’s tastes and desires are fluid. I may want something done a particular way today and done a different way tomorrow. And yet another way the day after that. I therefore may become dissatisfied (indeed, feel hard done by) if I have to settle for anything less than what I want the instance I want it.
Product designers and manufacturers in worldwide commerce are only too aware of these changing desires, which is why in many areas specific products to meet specific needs are increasingly being merged into a single product with multiple functions.
The evolving toaster is a prime example of this. There are already toasters on the market or in development to suit a variety of exigencies, not only in terms of how the final piece of toast will look and taste, but also in how easily the desired result at any given moment can be assured.
Computers in the form of microcontrollers already play a significant role in how toasters fulfill their daily tasks. At the moment, many of these specific features are available in specific, specialized toaster models (often with prices to match). However, increasingly they will be incorporated into standard models, with prices to attract the general purchaser.
As one industry watcher put it, “So go ahead, embrace the future and enjoy perfectly toasted bread every day!”
Some of the changes in store for the toaster will be physical, i.e., how it will look.
For example, in one specialized model, the body of the toaster can tilt down, allowing the toast to slide effortlessly onto a plate. Gone is the need to remove the toast from the appliance by hand, which sometimes leads to accidents and burns. At this writing, this tilting feature is not automatic but is done by a lever, which means there is still a slight (but nevertheless real) of accidentally touching the hot body of the toaster.
Individualization of toast-making, regardless of the physical form, will rely increasingly on AI (artificial intelligence). Here are some of the features to look forward to in the average household toaster in the near to medium future.
- Custom toasting preferences for each individual slice, so everyone in the household gets their toast just the way they like it.
- Built-in warming rack to keep the toast warm while members of the household are getting ready in the morning.
- Recognition of the type of bread with the toasting time being adjusted accordingly. This means no more burned bagels or under-toasted English muffins. For example, the bagel setting turns on only the inside of the heating element so only the inside is toasted.
- Control over the internet so that the toaster can be turned on at a distance.
- A frozen button that makes it easy to toast bread that has been stored in a freezer.
- A “quick look” button and a “bit more” button. Bread varies in thickness and density so it’s impossible for the toaster to be preset to make perfect toast. The quick-look button gradually raises the bread or bagel to the top so you can see how the toasting is progressing. The bit-more button lowers the bread back down for a bit more cooking time.
And the list goes on and on. How many of these so-called “smart toaster” features will survive and be integrated into the standard toaster models of the future is open to debate. What is not open to debate is that the toaster will continue to evolve in order to be more and more personalized. And that computer technology will play an increasingly important role in that evolution.
Personal Note
My toaster I had been using for some 20 years recently died, so I had to buy a new one. My previous toaster was extremely simple because I didn’t need anything more sophisticated. You set the timer, put in the bread, pressed down on the lever to start the toasting process, and waited until it was finished.
The new toaster seemed to be exactly the same—until I tried it for the first time. I set the timer, put in the bread, pressed down the lever, and went about doing other things until the toast was ready. Then I discovered the truth.
Previously, I had known that the toast was finished by the “pop” sound the appliance made when the metal toasting racks were released and jumped to the surface for the toast to be removed. However, my new toaster didn’t make this familiar sound because the toasting racks didn’t jump up. Instead, when the toast was ready, it quietly raised the racks to the surface with virtually no sound at all. So, I was unaware that the toast was ready to be removed.
I know this is a small thing. But until it happened, I hadn’t realized just how integral this popping sound had been in my life. I have now gotten used to the silence; however, I am still nostalgic for the pop. My one true wish for toasters of the future is an option for the toast racks with the finished toast to rise to the surface silently or with a “pop” sound as in the past.
One can only hope.