I know this is a very old thread, but just thought I’d add an idea I came up with a while ago. My Nan always cooked toast under the grill. When she lost her bottom teeth she liked eating one sided toast. As she got older she would occasionally burn the toast under the grill so she used the toaster instead for safety. I suggested she put 2 slices in the one slot so they shield each other and low and behold you get one sided toast without a fancy toaster.
I use a toaster oven. I place two slices of bread, one atop the other, and toast. Perfect results for a BLT or egg sammich.
I’m an Englishman and although I have deliberately made single-sided toast once or twice*, I think the line in the song is simply intended to portray a Englishman as being typically received as a quirky and awkward character; the fact that the line in the song is hard to comprehend is, I think, exactly the desired effect.
*Two slices dropped together into the toaster so that only the outer side of each slice gets toasted - it comes out crisp on one side and steamy-soft on the other - load the un-toasted side with cheese and ham and put it back together as a sandwich - it has the crisp nature of a toasted sandwich, but the soft untoasted inside grips the filling so it doesn’t fall out.
ETA: (I did realise this was a zombie)
Maybe it’s a northern thing (I’m from NI) but we never used a toaster when I was growing up; all toast was made under a grill. This meant one side at a time, so you had double the wait to toast both sides. And it changes the eating experience from soft and chewy to crispy by doing both sides, and I always preferred the former, although it massively depends on the bread used.
“Single sided toast”? Wow, I never even conceived of such a thing. I’m learning a lot just reading these threads.
You have to first imagine what would now be called ‘artisan’ bread rather than pre-sliced pap. Then you have to picture a pretty eccentric gay (in the days when that was illegal here) upper-class Englishman for whom everything he did was an art form - think David Hockney or Andy Warhol.
Certainly toasting bread or muffins on one side was done in the days when a log/coal fire and a toasting fork was required. I remember doing that and the smell of toasting bread and scorched knuckles inclined one to take shortcuts.
I have a toaster that is broken and only toasts on one side. Now I’m considering selling it.
The one-sided mode on a modern toaster is for toasting bagels. Even zombie bagels.
A bipolar toaster?
Mobius toaster: it can only toast on one side…
When I was in basic training, the mess hall had a one-sided toaster. I think it was some sort of conveyor belt contraption.
Might as well add to the zombie.
This exchange happened on Alton Brown’s old show Good Eats, the episode “Toast Modern”, which aired in April of 2003:
So that’s where I’d first heard of it. It doesn’t really bother me either way.
Except that I have a question from the above: if you’re using one-sided toast to make a sandwich, does the toasted side go on the outside of the sandwich, or the inside, or facing up, or what?
Outside!
Try it. 100x better with the outside toasted and the inside raw bread.
Medium to high-end toasters sold in the USA have a “Bagel” setting, which is essentially the same thing. Generally only the middle sides will warm up, so that you can toast the cut part f the bagel without spoiling texture of the “crust” side.
There are 2 heating elements, on either side of the bread. But I could imagine one of them might break and nobody bothering to replace it at a basic training camp – they aren’t known for coddling trainees there. They also could have a bun griller – designed to toast one side of a bun or sub sandwich – that they are misusing to produce toast.
The conveyor-style toaster is used instead of a pop-up toaster when you need to produce high volumes of toast – commercial pop-up toasters can go up to 8 slices per minute; conveyor ones can do up to 24 slices per minute.
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
My aunt used to have one of those one-side-at-a-time toasters. It always made it weird to eat breakfast at her house. You could either have toast done only on one side, or have double-sided toast with one side cold.
It’s not a Moebius toaster you need, but Moebius Bread. That way you can have one side toasted, but it feels as if it’s regular toast.
Of course, in order to toast such bread you need:
a.) a very long-slot toaster, and then after you toast the bread you re-assemble it as a Moebius strip
or
b.) A moebius Toaster
or c.) a 4-dimensional toaster.
And He Built A Crooked Toaster
Could a toastmaster be one-sided?
For me, toasted side out to maintain the crunch when eaten warm - the soft inside holds onto the filling better