The Confessions of a Bread Burner

The electrician shook the toaster like a kid jingling a piggy bank, turned it upside down and gave it another shake, put his right eye in the slot where you put the bread and screamed.

“Koila, Coal!” he yelled and rushed into the bathroom to wash his eyes. My wife’s eyes accused me of being responsible for the near blinding of the poor chap.. I turned my face away but it was not my fault. Who asked the fool to put his eye so close to the toaster as if he was looking through a camera’s viewfinder?

“How did the coal get inside?” he asked as soon as he returned.

“Ask saheb” said my wife. “He uses the toaster to manufacture charcoal”

.
He got the message. “Arrey saheb, if you can’t make toast ask madam to do it” he said with an infuriating grin.

My wife, surprisingly.rushed to my defence. “No, he makes excellent toast.for us.
But the problem is that he likes his bread not just crisp but burnt.”.

The electrician shook his head disbelievingly and took the toaster with him
to undo the damages caused by my craving for burnt toast.

That is true, I am a bread burner (not a bride burner). And I enjoy burning the bread before eating it.

I am not inventing excuses for my culinary incompetence, nor am I a gastronomic masochist. I am a really good cook but I cannot eat bread unless it is burnt.

My love for burnt toast started in my bachelor days days when I was a disaster in the kitchen. My mother would stand close and watch even while I was filling water in a bottle proffering words of advice like “ Watch out” “Don’t hurt yourself” etc. You can imagine the fate of bread in the hands of such a person. It those toasts had been sent for post mortem the report would have been : “Burnt beyond recognition”.

As I hated wasting food I always ate the burnt bread. Slowly I started developing an attachment to it which gradually grew into love and addiction.

Even after mastering culinary skills (Believe it or not, my wife says I should have become a chef instead of a journalist) my love for burnt toast remains, to the annoyance of my wife and daughter.

“One day we will have to call the fire brigade” grumbles the daughter frequently.

An aunt from the United States complained during a visit that the fire alarm in her kitchen was so sensitive that she was not able to make any deep fried dishes. “Even if I try to fry puris, it starts howling” she complained.. .

“Thank God we do not have such systems here” the wife said. “Then they will be triggered as soon as my husband enters the kitchen”. That was really unfair.

My wife tried to wean me away from the habit. “Eating burnt food cancer says a newspaper report,” she said once holding a newspaper. I checked the paper and found nothing of that sort. It was a trick based on the belief that I see the newspaper only for crosswords and sudoku and just don’t bother about the news. While that is mostly true sometimes calculations based on that can go wrong.

A ridiculous attempt was made by my sister-in-law to put the fear of God into your unbelieving truly on the burnt toast issue. “The scriptures say burning food is a grievous sin. You’ll suffer torments of hell for it” she threatened me.

Her mouth remained agape long enough for a dozen flys and an equal number of mosquitoes to get into it when I told her that I wouldn’t mind hell as all interesting people go there. Anyone who had read Dante would know that. Hell is for the interesting people. The mildly boring ones go to purgatory where after treatment they are converted to real bores and packed off to heaven. After all, you don’t need to be interesting to hosanna the almighty all the time.

And who is bothered about heaven when you can get it on earth? For me paradise is the bittersweet flavour of a charred slice of bread with some orange marmalade on it. And nobody can take that heaven from me, not even my wife and daughter who complain that they need oxygen masks to enter the kitchen after I have been in it.

Hi Balajee,

That is true, I am a bread burner (not a bride burner). And I enjoy burning the bread before eating it.

Very funny and hilarious post about Toaster..

Anyways whoever says anything wrong about toasting of bread I think u r going to bang them...

Hugs,
dg..

Bang them! Dream girl, Ill hang them! Half the pleasure sorry 90% pleasure of eating the bread comes from burning it. You can even say the taste of the bread is in burning.

Hanging....
I too always prefer bread to be toasted

dg..

Originally Posted by Balajee

Bang them! Dream girl, Ill hang them! Half the pleasure sorry 90% pleasure of eating the bread comes from burning it. You can even say the taste of the bread is in burning.

Originally Posted by dream.girl

Hanging....
I too always prefer bread to be toasted

dg..

dream girl if I say I like my bread toasted, I.d be making an understatement.

Dear Balajee,


Im glad my friend Balajee is not a Bride Burner.HAHA.Man u aer a disaster personified.I think u do this deliberately so that yr wife does not force u to do cooking.You are one smart cookie !

I must learn the art of humour from u and Santosh, Superb.Regards.kamal

Originally Posted by Kamalji

Dear Balajee,


Im glad my friend Balajee is not a Bride Burner.HAHA.Man u aer a disaster personified.I think u do this deliberately so that yr wife does not force u to do cooking.You are one smart cookie !

I must learn the art of humour from u and Santosh, Superb.Regards.kamal

Kamalji, my wife does not allow me to enter the kitchen on weekdays because the kitchen looks like a battlefield afterwards. But she tolerates that on weekends for two reasons: 1) I am a damn good cook 2) She gets some rest. I burn bread intentionally because I like the taste of burnt bread

hI balajee,
First of all envy your wife for having such a good cook at home...have actually been advising dd the last few days that it would not be a bad idea to go for a sanjeev kapoor or the likes...doesnt seem to show any interest in cooking...BTW a great blog on burnt toast....dd says she too has friends who really like their toast burnt black so..... to each his own ....i suppose...
regards
Mindi

Dear Balajee,

Would love to try yr cooking, but no burnt bread for me , OK ? But i could wash down burnt bread, if given a helping of some nice Fish with BL.Regards.kamal

hello sir,

very hilarious post.Enjoyed throughly.

thankyou for making us laugh with your writings.
Radhika.