The Crux Of Toast
by Arthur Asa Berger

The existence of the toaster implies the existence of sliced 
bread. For that is what one uses in a toaster. And sliced 
bread itself implies a certain kind of bread: bread that has
a particular form or shape most practical for slicing.

The toaster is part of a system and only has significance
relative to the wrapped, pan-made, thin-crusted bread that 
can be used in it. One problem with this bread is that it 
is very soft and spongy. Siegfried Giedion, in Mechanization
Takes Command, has described this bread as neither bread 
nor cake but something halfway between the two.

This does not mean that we do not have other kinds of bread.
We do, but generally they cost more than the standard loaf 
of white or whole-grain bread. These "touched by human hands"
breads tend to be ethnic – French, Italian, Jewish, Russian – 
and are generally slightly irregular in shape, often having 
a crust.

Mechanized and standardized bread is no longer a product 
with an irregular shape; it is a highly rationalized product 
designed to maximize profit for the baker. Consumers had to 
be "taught" to like this kind of bread, and it was, no doubt, 
part of the process of "Americanization" that many ethnic 
groups underwent, a way to repudiate one’s ethnic identity 
and non-Americanness.

This kind of white bread may be the perfect product for the 
middle classes, standing midway, as they do, between the 
upper classes and the working classes. Their bread, if 
Giedion is right, is midway between traditional bread and 
cake (neither one nor the other). Toast may suggest, 
unconsciously, a transformation to a higher status. The 
working classes eat their crusts of bread; the elites 
"take toast and tea."

But what is toast – the product of a process or the process 
itself? That is, does bread become toast (and change its 
identity somehow) or do we toast bread and thereby only 
modify its character slightly? Is toast bread that has 
been processed (toasted) or fundamentally changed (made 
into toast)?

Obviously, we start off with a piece of bread – and for our 
purposes, let us assume that we have the standard load of 
sliced pan bread with its thin crust. The question is whether 
we end up with a variation of the piece of sliced bread or 
with something that is wholly different. In terms of the 
dynamics of American culture, I would suggest that we would 
like to think that toast is something different from bread 
per se. We believe in the power of change and in our 
ability to change our circumstance and status.

Ultimately, the toaster is an apology for the quality of our 
bread. It attempts, heroically, to transform the semisweet, 
characterless, "plastic" packaged bread that we have learned 
to love into something more palatable and more manageable. 
Perhaps our handling this bread and warming it up gives us 
a sense that the bread now has a human touch to it, is not 
an abstract, almost unreal product. The toaster represents
a herioc attempt to redeem the unredeemable. But the toaster 
is doomed to the continual repetition of Adam and Eve’s Fall, 
for an unregenerate bread cannot be saved. Every piece of 
toast is a tragedy.