Here at The Salt, we get a lot of emails from public relations firms hawking newfangled food products and services. Sometimes it's difficult to discern whether they're for real.
So when we got an email from the San Francisco Cooking School on Tuesday shilling a one-day class on How to Make Toast, we did the email version of a double take.
"Why pay $25 for a slice of toast when you can learn to make it at home?" communications strategist Laiko Bahrs wrote us. "From demystifying the 'Wonder' of sliced bread to exploring a variety of techniques ranging from light to dark to extra dark, you'll learn how to transform your favorite loaf to a crispy golden state here at the best cooking school in the Golden Gate."
School for toast in San Francisco, home of the artisanal toast craze (check this wonderful article in Pacific Standard for background), is perhaps not that farfetched. People in San Francisco are now paying $4 for slices of fancy toast, and Seattle restaurants, not to be outdone, are following suit.
Bahrs then offered a sneak peak of the class menu:
"Some of the dishes your class will prepare are Wonder Toast with Butter, Extra-Dark Orowheat Toast with Extra Butter, Extra-Extra-Dark Boudin Toast, served dry, and the famous Milquetoast as demonstrated by the cynical Hollywood executives who have chosen to re-boot Spiderman again instead of telling an original story."
The cost of $225 was ultimately the giveaway, as was the scheduled date of April 1.
But one can imagine workshops on toast making, perhaps taught by Josey Baker. He is an artisanal breadmaker, who has helped fuel San Francisco toast mania with a special toast menu at The Mill. He also has a forthcoming cookbook with toast recipes, complete with a trailer.
Maybe there are real mysteries to making toast. That might just be something we'll take up in our next cooking experiment.
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