The History of Toast

The History of toast really begins with the invention of bread.

For those of you who aren't aquainted with toast, some background information may be in order; you see bread is a major ingredient in the production of toast.

Many early versions of toast never worked out. A toasted loaf of bread was too much, a toasted chunk of bread torn off often caused its maker to burn their fingers in the campfire, or as archeologists call them, non-electric toasters. This problem coupled with the fact that butter easily slides off rounded burnt chunks of bread is why we now have the saying, "The greatest thing since sliced bread."

Sliced bread was a major stepping stone in the invention of toast. Luckily for us sliced bread was invented one sunny Sunday by George Washington. You see Ole Abe Lincoln and he were having a sword duel to see who would be the first President of the United States, the winner determining the name of what we now know as the United States. Abe Lincoln, as you may now have deduced, lost the match. Good for us because who wants to live in a place called Abe's Happy Fun Land?

Anyway back to the duel.

You most likely know from first hand experience that sword dueling can be quiet strenuous and requires a massive buffet and several breaks for the duelers, or duallettes. During which time they may consume undercooked porterhouse steaks and flagons of ale as was their custom in those days. A flagon for those of you don't know was named such because of the size of the beer mug. They say it was so tall you could hang a flag on.... it to warn away ships at sea that people were getting thoroughly drunk and not to land on this island.

If you had already known all of this I could have stuck with the original story of the toast instead of digressing to the history of sliced bread.

Back to the duel.

Lincoln being tall and gangly decided during one buffet break to use his arms length advantage and strike the fatal blow in the middle of lunch.

Not a very nice thing to do but they were drunk and had swords.

Fortunatley for Ole G. Washington he saw the blow coming reflected off a silver dollar on the table and reacted with his signature move, the Three Fisted Monkey Cutting Coconuts.

Only because of his short arms and near midget like stature, not to mention his wooden and hideous teeth, he could not reach Abe and instead sliced a deadly blow to a nearby loaf of bread.

Thus the invention of sliced bread.

Luckily for us in these United States the judges called Abe's foul move a fault and he lost 10 points. He was subsequently punished by being sent in a time machine forward to the year 1809.

Oh Yeah, back to the invention of toast.

In those days their idea of a time machine was to burn you alive. Abe Lincoln, strapped into the "Time Machine", (really just a post on top of kindling with bacon grease thrown on for good luck) was taunted by Ole G.W. holding up the sliced bread he had invented because of their duel. The extreme heat thrown off by the "Time Machine" was enough to burn G.W.'s hands, and more importantly "toast" the sliced bread he was holding.

After his burn was soothed with butter he ate the first toasted slice of buttered bread in the history of mankind.

People continued burning their hands in the production of toast until the invention of the electric toaster by Michael Angelo Davinci, of New Jersey in 1972.

Thus toast became ever more popular and its popularity spread from sea to shining sea.

That is until one of France's industrial spies got a hold of the recipe and modified it.

Making it all fancy and trying to claim it as their own by renaming it; yes, French Toast.

But that is a story for another time.