Food writer and television chef Nigella Lawson is taking viewers back to basics, whether they like it or not. On a recent episode of her BBC2 series Eat, Cook, Repeat, Lawson treated fans to an in-depth lesson on how to make… toast. That’s right: TOAST. She didn’t even bake the bread first!
Nigella Lawson’s toast lesson began with an explanation of the “two-stage buttering approach,” which, as you can probably imagine, involves buttering toast twice before eating it. “So far, only stage one has taken place,” she said, as the camera zoomed in on a piece of hot, buttered bread (one could actually say that she’s already succeeded at making toast, but I digress). “That’s to say, the minute this came out of the toaster and it was still lovely and hot, I spread it with butter so that the butter has melted down into it. And it’ll give it a fabulous crumpet-y bite.”
Lawson then moved on to stage two, which involves putting “a little more butter” on top to weigh down the first round. “It will stay in some golden patches on the surface,” she said, adding that she uses “unsalted butter” for this entire process. Considering that there are only two ingredients required to make toast, this probably would have been good to know a bit earlier!
Finally, it was time to put the finishing touches on her masterpiece. “What I need to do is sprinkle some sea salt flakes over,” she said. As she held up her heavily (and I mean heavily) buttered slice of bread, Lawson revealed that she has created the “platonic ideal of toast,” which, sure.
As you can imagine, viewers had a field day with Lawson’s toast lesson. “5 minutes I will never get back,” said one Twitter user. “Shook to the core that Nigella invented buttered toast,” joked another.
If Nigella is in need of a (virtual) guest star, might I suggest Tucson personal chef Mike Neylan, who has spent the past decade teaching viewers how to make a three-cheese blend for their favorite pizza. Viewers could really learn something from these two experts!