Experiment: Eliminating Toast Sweat
murrayhurps.com
murrayhurps.com
Might have gotten away with it because it's stoneware of some kind, but will definitely try a tape patch next time.
a quick and easy test whether something is below or above ~50 degrees Celsius, is whether it's immediately painful to the touch.
it's the temperature at which most of our proteins start to denature, aka the temperature at which a steak changes from "warm but raw" to "very rare", and therefore the temperature that hurts your fingers.
it's not super accurate of course, but it'll do if you just want to eyeball 53C.
And your thought raises the question: how much moisture do you actually want in your toast? Is zero acceptable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwieback
which while great with butter & jam, does not qualify as a toast anymore :)
(I live in one of the 190+ countries that use Celsius, but I know that 99.8% of things on the Internets are written by people from just one of those three other countries that doesn't. I'm also aware that for reasons that are a bit bewildering, everyone in those 190+ countries politely goes out of their way to make it clear that we're talking metric, because we're now used to the idea that if people don't mention units then they're probably from North America, and consequently are almost definitely using gallons (US, not UK gallons), miles (US, not UK miles), Fahrenheit and other deprecated units. We should probably stop being so considerate.)
I was running on fumes, it took 3 to fill my car up.
My friends new truck is super efficient for a pickup it gets 35 / 35 miles / 35 to the gallon.
I ran for 3 yesterday.
Buffalo is 120 from Syracuse.
As rgarrett88 points out, short distances are often reduced to foot and inch numbers, with the receiver left to intuit context. Sometimes people will assert they hit a hundred, or went from zero to a hundred in x seconds, and weight-lifters are likely to talk about the number they can push ... again reliant upon sender and receiver sharing the same cultural background.
My comment about 'us' being so considerate was somewhat tongue in cheek, natch, though (since I'm speaking for all the rest of us now) we'd really like it if you guys would switch over to metric at your earliest convenience. I won't say ISO / SI, as working in K is just too unwieldy :)
But if you think kg is frustrating, I'm learning electronics now - every book, when starting to talk about capacitors, says something like 'However, the Farad is not a convenient unit, and you'll most be working with 0.0000000001F capacitors'. Yes, the SI unit is unhindered by a prefix, but you can't but help wish they'd thought more carefully about this before writing it down.
-Sir Mix-a-Lot
Other than that, this is a rather cool (no pun intended) experiment. I usually just rested my toast horizontally across the toaster or placed it on a grill after toasting to avoid the dreaded toast sweat. Maybe I'll heat up my plates in the future. More importantly: the toast still cools down. Where does the toast sweat go? Where did it come from?
I was just going to dwell upon my amazement that toast lasts 120 seconds at your place. Butter really needs to get on and be melting within 10 seconds, vegemite or marmalade within another 10, and that leaves you about 15 seconds of tolerable consumption temperature. We are not animals, after all.
FYI - when I've been too busy to pre-warm the plate, I've found a sheet of kitchen paper between plate and toast can ameliorate some of the toast sweat problem.
I realize that this may make the plate "too hot to handle", but I'd gladly eat breakfast with one hand in an oven mitt if it would result in better toast.
I never measured it, but I had the feeling that the A form (looking from the side) slightly interferes with the rising steam.
How do you do it?
In the past I leaned it (like the A-form you mentioned) against some other stuff, like the cup or something.
Would something like neoprene/polystyrene plates (as insane as it sounds) provide a solution to slightly soggy toast at a lower temperature?
It's one thing to find an optimal temperature, but a completely other beast to find a practical solution to it!
Also, paper critically omits condition of toast prior to heating - was it stored in the fridge or in the cupboard? Was is stored in vacuum packaging or not? How old was the toast from the manufacturing date? Also toast can be weighted before and after heating, and after removal from the plate to measure loss of water content (it's my understanding that water on the plate is actually condensation, and not part of the toast, but is it indeed so?).
Murray should seriously consider establishing Murray Institute of Toasting Research and addressing these important topics in subsequent scientific publications.
Also hard to disagree with your suggestion as a new life path.
The global bread market is predicted to hit $170B by 2015 (GIA report), if we can capture the minds of just 1% of that market, then I'll be able to afford a better thermometer.
I'm sure that just after couple publications consulting gigs for brad and toaster manufacturers and speaking engagements will pay not only for thermometer, but also for microgram scale and hygrometer.
Interestingly, I spent some time thinking about where condensate is coming from, and so far it's not really obvious - some humid air needs to get colder for it to appear. May it's indeed evaporation from the piece of bread itself? But then it would be visible, in the same way evaporation is visible on top of cup of hot tea. Mystery.
The question now though is, how much would that condensation weigh? And hence how accurate do the scales need to be?
This is no different than why you have vapor barriers in certain climates.
Without trying to sound dismissive, i was not aware there was a lot of experimentation here necessary to figure out the temperature at which the water would stop condensing on the plate again.
Still a fun article, of course :)
http://brooklynoptimist.com/2014/04/10/hacker-school-banning...
YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OF DEW POINTS??
this surprise was however never about the other person, but about myself. i realized, that my worldview was so skewed about some topics, that i believed them to be almost universally accepted. the topics themselves were often unknown to people outside of my online-bubble.
I was not feigning surprise, I am literally surprised that this was not realized
Huh, so why condensate appears? Cold air in the room is not at dew point, even if it's heated around bread and then cooled again, content of water stays the same, so what is the reason for it condensate?
But you don't get blog visits that way, you know.
1) Fold a paper towel in half, then in half again (if using the select-a-size style, use two sheets).
2) Wet the paper towel so it is wet, but not dripping.
3) Place the wet paper towel on the bottom of the microwave in the center.
4) Place your plate directly over the paper towel, with the area you will place your toast over the towel.
5) Heat for 45 seconds.
The steam from the paper towel heats the specific area where the toast will sit, but the rest of the plate remains noticeably cooler. You do have to dry the plate with a towel when doing this, but it's relatively simple. Just don't let the water drip on you; it's hot.
I'd be interested to know next if it's possible for the plate to be too hot?
While the knife wedged under the edge works to stop it going too soggy, the other trick is to use a wooden tray or chopping board to serve on - this pulls out some of the residual moisture.
I am a huge pizza fan (I can and some times do eat it every day) and have been screwing around with pizza stones, oven hacks, different flower etc to make that 'restaurant pizza'; it's the temperature. With this thing everything comes out like it was created by the gods; it does not really matter what you put in; it just starts bubbling 2 seconds in and is fully cooked under 2 minutes. You will burn your entire mouth to stuff it in as quickly as you can while baking the next one and you will bake and eat way too many the first few goes leaving you ill and hating pizza (for about 1 hour). And when the fire dies down, you put in bread dough for the most wonderful bread. Life is good for such a small price. If you are handy and have a lot of time (I am handy ; no time) you can build it yourself. Don't make it too big; when it's the right temp, you can make 1 pizza per 2 minutes which is enough for most settings. If you have one which fits 2+ pizza's, you'll be tossing in crazy amounts of wood to get it started.
"Never serve hot food on a cold plate." -Ramsay
It seems obvious enough when you get in the habit and you wonder why you never started warming your plates to begin with.
It's usually not an extra chore if you capture the ambient heat of a cooking source. Putting plates in the oven when you take the food out to rest. Putting a plate on top of the toaster for half a minute could work in this case.