London: Guess what could be the best thing since sliced bread? Well, a formula for the perfect toast - it's best cooked for exactly 3 minutes and 36 seconds, say scientists.
Their study found this amount of time created the perfect "golden-brown" colour with the "ultimate balance of external crunch and internal softness". The optimum thickness of the bread should be 14 mm and the ideal amount of butter 0.44 grams per square inch.
The toaster dial must also be set to five out of six on a 900-watt appliance to achieve a temperature of 154C.
Once the perfect slice has popped out it should be buttered immediately, sliced once diagonally, and then served on a plate warmed to 45C, to minimise condensation beneath the toast, the 'Daily Express' reported. Lead author Dr Dom Lane, a consultant food researcher, spent a week toasting and tasting 2,000 slices to find the right cooking formula.
He found if more or less than 216 seconds was taken to cook the toast, it would lose the desired 12:1 exterior to interior crispiness. The best bread to toast he found was a pale seeded loaf taken fresh from a fridge at 3C. And both sides had to be cooked at the same time rather than on one side to help "curtail excessive moisture loss".
The study for Vogel's bread firm polled 1,913 people and found Britain's preferred shade of toasted bread was "builder's brew".
Dr Lane said: "Taking the most popular mid-point toast tone and the complicated maths, we derived the formula for the perfect slice of toast. It's then relatively straight-forward to develop a five-step process, allowing toast lovers to replicate our laboratory method in their own kitchens."
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