Toast and Water
Ingredients
Directions
Toast the crust of bread until brown on all sides over a fire.
Place the toasted crust in a jug and pour 1 quart of cold water over it.
Cover the jug with a cloth and let it sit for 30 minutes.
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
- Bread crust
- Toasting browns the crust, creating roasted flavor and color that the water draws out.
- Cold water
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and color from the toasted crust over time.
The step that matters
Toast the crust until brown on all sides. Browning, a Maillard reaction between sugars and amino acids, produces the roasted flavor and color. Pale or unevenly toasted bread gives a weak, flat-tasting liquid.
“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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