The History of Toast

Toast was created entirely by accident during the 1500's by a witch, her name was Ethel Bagshaw.

She’d been experimenting with different ways to provide heat shielding about her person in case of a witch trial. Sliced bread to her was an obvious choice - you may not know this, but the frozen pizza base provides more direct heat protection than one of the ceramic tiles used on the space shuttle, it cost significantly less, weighs less, and tastes better. The frozen pizza base however hadn’t been invented back then, but perhaps Ethel with her supernatural abilities had tapped into some sense of what was to come and so tried out the bread.

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The testing though wasn’t as successful as hoped, the bread of course toasted beautifully (toasted a word from the Latin  torrere - to make brown and delicious). 

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Suffering some minor burns Ethel set about applying butter to the wounds, as was the way then, in her haste much of the butter accidentally smothered the toasted bread. 

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The combination of butter on toast was immediately irresistible and so the first buttered toast was born.

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In delight at her discovery Ethel tried to share it with her townsfolk, they were so dumbstruck with it’s brilliance that it was immediately deemed the result of witchcraft and consequently Ethel was drowned on a dunking stool (the bread not helping with floating either)

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Ethels demise wasn’t the demise of toast though. Like many sinful vices it was immediately adopted by the clergy.

Toast became a part of the daily life of those in the church, its magnificence initially a secret but so popular that it wasn’t long before the aristocracy got wind of it too.

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Not long after this toast became a ritual part of public school boarder’s life until eventually during the industrial revolution when schools for the masses were deemed a good idea the secret of toast was revealed to everyone and Britain became great, fuelled by sweet tea and the warm buttery stuff.

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So now for over a hundred years toast has been enjoyed by everyone.