To Make Toast and Water
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut a slice from a stale loaf, preferably a piece of hard crust.
Toast the bread until it is a nice brown on all sides, avoiding burning.
Steep and strain
Place the toasted bread into a jug and pour the boiling water over it.
Cover the jug closely and let it sit until cold.
Strain the mixture before use.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Toasted crust provides browned, toasty flavour that colours the water.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavour and soluble compounds from the toasted bread as it steeps.
The step that matters
Toasting the bread to brown on all sides. Browning through Maillard reactions creates the toasty flavour the water takes on. Burnt bread adds bitter, acrid notes that spoil the drink.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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