Photo: Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Let's be honest about fried bread. It is a slice of white bread, fried in fat. Nobody has ever claimed it is good for you. But done properly, it is one of the most wonderful things on an English breakfast: golden, crisp enough to shatter when you cut it, tasting of bacon, with a fried egg sitting on top just waiting for you to break the yolk.
In a cafe you will hear it called a fried slice. Just so there is no confusion, it is not toast, and it is not the eggy bread or French toast that gets dipped in beaten egg first. Fried bread is bread and fat and nothing else, and it is all the better for it.
Fried bread came about in the most sensible way imaginable. You have fried your bacon and your sausages, and you are left with a pan full of hot fat that tastes wonderful. You are not going to throw that away. So you take a slice of yesterday's bread, fry it in the fat, and you have turned leftovers into the best thing on the plate. It costs nothing and it wastes nothing.
Cooks have been frying bits of bread for centuries. They used to call them sippets and serve them as a garnish. As part of breakfast, fried bread arrived with the fried breakfast itself, and as our reference guide notes, it has been on English breakfast plates since the early twentieth century.
It was the food of people who worked hard for a living and couldn't afford to waste anything, in the days when a cooked breakfast had to see you through a long day of physical work. We think that is a history to be proud of.
Yes, with one small qualification. Fried bread is a traditional accompaniment to the English breakfast. It is not one of the core components that define the meal, but it has sat beside them for a very long time and it has earned its place.
Sadly, you see it less and less. Most hotels and a lot of cafes now give you toast instead, and fried bread is always the first thing to be dropped when somebody decides breakfast ought to be healthier. Our view, as we say in the reference guide, is that the argument is really about changing ideas of diet, and nothing to do with tradition. Fried bread was never meant to be sensible.
Our neighbours have their own versions, by the way. An Ulster fry has fried soda bread and potato bread, and a full Scottish has the fried tattie scone. They all do the same job.
Bad fried bread is heavy and greasy, and it puts people off for life. Good fried bread is light and crisp. The difference is all in how you cook it, and it is very easy once you know.
Start with white bread from a proper loaf, sliced medium thick, and a day or two old. Slightly stale bread is actually better, because it is drier and soaks up less fat.
Use bacon fat, lard or beef dripping. These are the traditional fats, and they give a flavour that vegetable oil can't. The very best fried bread is cooked in the pan the bacon has just come out of.
Now for the secret. The fat has to be hot before the bread goes in, hot enough that it sizzles the moment it touches the pan. This is where nearly everybody goes wrong. Put bread into lukewarm fat and it drinks it up like a sponge. Put it into hot fat and it seals and crisps straight away.
Make sure there is enough fat to cover the bottom of the pan, and add a spoonful of lard if it looks dry. Lay the bread in and leave it for a minute or two, until the underside is an even gold. Turn it over and do the other side. You may need a little more fat at this point, because the first side will have taken most of it. Press down gently with a spatula so the whole slice touches the pan.
Let it drain on some kitchen paper for a few seconds and then get it on to a hot plate. Fried bread won't wait for you.
A fried egg, first and always, sitting on top so the yolk runs down into the bread. It is also the perfect thing with tinned tomatoes or baked beans, because it stays crisp under the juice where toast just goes soggy.
Cafes cut it in half from corner to corner, and one slice is plenty. It is rich, and it is supposed to be. A slice of black pudding, a couple of rashers of back bacon, an egg and a fried slice is about as traditional an English breakfast as you could ever ask for. Treat yourself.
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