The Science Of Toasting
Research is carried out on a great many things in the fields of science and technology, but some researchers definitely seem to have fallen on their feet with regards to what they have to study.
Take these two groups for example; the first toasted white bread for different times, until it went brown! The second toasted bread and sniffed it. Not cutting edge stuff you might think, well, you could be wrong...
A bunch of Spanish boffins looked at short (under five minutes) and long (five minutes to an hour) toasting times and checked browning indicators - which were chemical levels, colour and absorbance. Colour and absorbance always increased with cooking time. The content of one chemical (furosine) increased until seven minutes and then decreased at 60 minutes. HMF (another chemical) was found to be the best indicator of browning toast! Great...
Some Germans, on the other hand, investigated the smell of toast. Bread was again toasted until it went various shades of brown and the odours analysed using several complicated processes. They found that toasting bread leads to characteristic odour profiles where smells classified as roasty/caramel-like, malty and buttery dominate. At the start of toasting, the roasty smell increases quicker than the caramel smell; the latter is produced by medium brown toast!
Now this is the type of research that would have kept us all in science classes that bit longer at school.
[Ramírez-Jiménez, A., García-Villanova, B. and Guerra-Hernández, E. (2001). Effect of toasting time on the browning of sliced bread. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 81, 513-518.
Rychlik, M. and Grosch, W. (1996). Identification and quantification of potent odorants formed by toasting of wheat bread. Lebensmittel Wissenschaft und Technologie 29, 515-525. ]
Toast facts:
A slice of buttered toast contains about 315 kJ of energy. This could be used to: Jog for 6 minutes; cycle for 10 minutes; walk briskly for 15 minutes; sleep for 1.5 hours. Or, it could be used to: Run a car for 7 seconds at 80 kph; run a 60 watt light bulb for 1.5 hours.
John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich and British politician born in 1718, is claimed to be the man who named the ‘sandwich’. It came about when he was trying to find a way of playing cards without being interrupted, and developed a habit of putting sliced beef between two pieces of toast.
Take these two groups for example; the first toasted white bread for different times, until it went brown! The second toasted bread and sniffed it. Not cutting edge stuff you might think, well, you could be wrong...
A bunch of Spanish boffins looked at short (under five minutes) and long (five minutes to an hour) toasting times and checked browning indicators - which were chemical levels, colour and absorbance. Colour and absorbance always increased with cooking time. The content of one chemical (furosine) increased until seven minutes and then decreased at 60 minutes. HMF (another chemical) was found to be the best indicator of browning toast! Great...
Some Germans, on the other hand, investigated the smell of toast. Bread was again toasted until it went various shades of brown and the odours analysed using several complicated processes. They found that toasting bread leads to characteristic odour profiles where smells classified as roasty/caramel-like, malty and buttery dominate. At the start of toasting, the roasty smell increases quicker than the caramel smell; the latter is produced by medium brown toast!
Now this is the type of research that would have kept us all in science classes that bit longer at school.
[Ramírez-Jiménez, A., García-Villanova, B. and Guerra-Hernández, E. (2001). Effect of toasting time on the browning of sliced bread. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 81, 513-518.
Rychlik, M. and Grosch, W. (1996). Identification and quantification of potent odorants formed by toasting of wheat bread. Lebensmittel Wissenschaft und Technologie 29, 515-525. ]
Toast facts:
A slice of buttered toast contains about 315 kJ of energy. This could be used to: Jog for 6 minutes; cycle for 10 minutes; walk briskly for 15 minutes; sleep for 1.5 hours. Or, it could be used to: Run a car for 7 seconds at 80 kph; run a 60 watt light bulb for 1.5 hours.
John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich and British politician born in 1718, is claimed to be the man who named the ‘sandwich’. It came about when he was trying to find a way of playing cards without being interrupted, and developed a habit of putting sliced beef between two pieces of toast.
