It’s the mystifying question which has plagued you throughout your entire life: when, precisely, does bread stop being bread and subvert reality to become toast? At some stage when a slice of bread is in a toaster, this miraculous phenomenon occurs. When is the crossover? Is the bread feeling any pain? Is it morally sound? Is there a reverse process or, like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, is the bread destined to a grotesque transformation?

Clearly, the toaster has something to do with it. This device is a sort of cattle prod for the bread world – you place the bread inside it and, within the wire-based confines of the toaster, it is incinerated to such a degree it changes species. Phenomenal! Except, at which millisecond is the bread no longer bread? We discuss. As Samuel L. Jackson says in Jurassic Park from 1993: “Hold on to your butts”.

When Does Bread Become Toast?

There are big questions such as “are we alone in the universe” (no – there are, like, 100 trillion planets out there, stupid), “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” (amoebic life forms, dumbass), and “what killed off the dinosaurs?” (gentrification, of course) – we’re more interested in bread and toast.

Bread is made by mixing flour with eggs, yeast, salt, and (in the absence of the eggs and salt) glue. It is a tasty product which has satiated human beings for millennia. You know your great, great, great, great grandparents? They ate bread at least once in their lives. Interesting, huh? They didn’t own a toaster, however, as they were only invented by the Scottish in 1893. Thanks, Scotland!

As for our most pertinent question, we took to some extensive theorising and carried out several tests to determine when bread becomes toast – precisely! The best option, we figured, was to get up close and personal and watch the bread toasting away. Unfortunately, this led to Mr. Wapojif (our esteemed editor) catching fire. He now has singed eyebrows and a third-degree burn in the middle of his forehead.

Next up, we decided to film it with our iPhone. So we inserted a piece of bread with our iPhone attached (with record on, of course, we’re not stupid!) and awaited the results. Unfortunately, this led to a severe amounts of choking black smoke pulsing out of the toaster and, again unfortunately, severe damage to the smartphone. We are now suing Apple for not making its phones toaster-proof.

Can You reverse The Toasting Process?

We abandoned our experiments immediately after these disasters to focus on whether or not one could subvert reality again and turn toast back into bread (kind of like what Adam Sandler has done to his acting career – toast is better than bread). Sadly, once a piece of bread has been toasted there is no physical way for you to make the aforementioned piece of toast a piece of bread again. It is a tragedy, but if you require further bread, go to your local store and buy some. It’s as simple as this.

As for French baguettes… we can only shudder in horror at the unholy, nightmarish process physics forces upon the flour to create that thing. What utter torment the flour must go through! Still, baguettes are really bloody tasty. Like, Mr. Wapojif’s brain is watering simply thinking about the stuff right now. Dammit, why is England so rubbish at making baguettes?! That’s another post for another day.