I have recently switched from white bread to brown bread. Being very fond of toast, I have noticed that it takes a lot less time to toast the brown bread than it does white bread. A difference of about a minute, which is a long time in the world of toasted products. I haven’t changed the settings on my toaster and I’m wondering if I am just imagining it or whether there’s a scientific explanation. Something in the make-up of brown bread that makes it more susceptable to toasting?
It’s clearly a question of earth-shattering importance.
Toasters use radiant heat to do their thing. Brown bread will reflect less and absorb more of the radiant heat so should toast faseter. Also, different breads have different moisture contents which can affect toasting time.
Well, the first thing i thought of abt this is that dark colored things gain/lose heat faster then light colored things. But mayby this isn’t the end of the story…
As Nishroch Order says, I don’t think it’s the end of the story…
If it is just a heat absorbing phenomenon, then why does it take longer to toast bagels and English muffins than it does to toast white bread? They all have similar, if not identical, reflective qualities.
ticker suggests moisture. Anyone else have a theory?
Not so fast everybody… Listen to Algernon and Niobium. There might be more to the issue than that.
Toasters work mainly in the infrared, and before I have seen pictures of light and dark bread in the IR part of the spectrum I’m sceptical.
In the meantime I propose another mechanism:
Brown bread is firmer, and can be sliced thinner. Thinner slices mean less bread to heat up, ergo faster toasting.
Do, Francesca, have you measured the slice thickness?
Moisture content id also important, as already noted. This shows clearly as fresh bread toasts slower than yesterdays loaf.
I haven’t measured the thickness of the slice, but I always buy the pre-sliced “thick sliced” bread, white or brown. They look pretty much the same size to me.
One notable difference between the breads is that the brown bread is actually, contrary to Popup’s theory (sorry), notably softer than the white bread - could this be a factor? Perhaps there is more moisture in the softer brown bread… but wouldn’t this mean it would toast slower than a bread with less moisture?
This site (Hamilton Beach) says toasting time is a factor of bread temperature (before putting it into the toaster), moisture content, and surface regularity.
Density is a huge factor. White bread is nearly always less dense than wheat or whole grain bread. All other things being equal (which they never are), the surface of white bread is better insulated from the bulk of the slice allowing less heat transfer away form the surface resulting in faster toasting. There is also the mass of the slice that needs to be heated where, again, given an equally thick slice each of wheat and white bread the higher mass of the wheat bread will take more energy (and a longer time) to toast.
I see this as a (if not the) main reason why (usually very dense) bagels take so long to get nicely browned.