Have We Been Buttering Our Toast All Wrong?

We may have been making one of the easiest breakfasts in the world the wrong way all these years.

Raquel Pelzel, author of the new book Toast, recommends buttering your bread before you put it in the toaster. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But the more you consider pre-buttering your toast, the more it starts to make sense.

Pelzel’s case for buttering the bread before toasting is that by allowing the butter to melt into the bread in the toaster oven or regular oven, it soaks through more of the bread and coats it evenly. Plus you don’t have to worry about trying to spread cold butter before it has melted, and there won’t be any toast crumbs marring the stick of butter that goes back in the fridge.

Finally, a word of caution: You can’t pre-butter your bread if you use a pop-up toaster. That’s a sure recipe for a grease fire, and ruined toast.

→ Read more: How to Butter Your Toast from Food52