The real history of toast
Not so fast blaming the yankees. In the beginning (or near enough), there was bread. But in the beginning there was no grocery store, baker, fridge or freezer, so a lot of this bread became stale. Probably at some point, somebody got fed up with stale bread and tossed a piece of it in the fire, or at least meant to. Instead, it landed nearby, browned in the glow of the flames, someone found it, bit into it, and voila: toast. A lot of early inventions must have sparked from such frustration.
The Egyptians generally get credit for leavened bread: the British Museum houses 5,000 year old Egyptian loaves, and King Tut was buried with a stalk of wheat, the symbol of Royalty. But Romans usually get the credit for toast. Whether they actually discovered that fire plus bread equals an entirely different savory golden-brown treat, or whether they just liked the idea and popularized it, is uncertain, but either way they took charge of the branding. āTostumā is Latin for scorched, and toast was made by putting stale bread on a stone near fire, and later, on a wire frame over fire.