From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Um.

Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Ruby Guthrie.

Um.

Toast is one of my go-to snacks. It's simple. It's easy. You just pop your bread in the toaster, have a little

dance break, then bam. You've got golden grainy goodness ready to be topped with anything your heart

desires. I love toast so much, I wrote a poem about it.

Toast, oh toast, I love you most.

How I adore that bread which roasts.

Spread with butter, avocado, or jam, top with cheese, pickled herring, or ham.

Not altogether at once.

Of course not. Although, on second thought, it could hit the spot,

because in my eyes, Toast can do no wrong. It's in my heart and my tummy where it belongs.

To me, Toast is like magic, but how does it transform in the toaster?

Listener Meredith had the same question.

Well, first, let's talk about a toaster.

Hello, my name is Dave Dominguez, and I am a food scientist here in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

When you've ever looked at a toaster before, you push down the lever and you see those kind of those heating coils start to heat up and

start glowing. So a lot of infrared kind of energy is being kind of popped in there. So one of the

things with a sliced piece of bread now, now I've got a lot of surface area, all right? And so initially

what happens is that

bread starts to heat up and it starts to dehydrate. So now I've got this dry heat. I'm drying out

the bread. And you're right. It turns brown and what's kind of going on? Well, there's a couple

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