Do you ever wonder if bread itself has the option to emerge from the toaster either golden and perfect or burnt and crusty? Like, maybe when it’s lowered into the heated slots it uses that time to just reflect on its life, look back on all the steps that led it here. Bread surely has dark days like we do—getting sliced, discarded, staled, ignored by the anti-gluten sect. That would be enough to darken anyones spirit. Maybe when the toast pops up burnt and crispy, it’s just really, really…sad. Maybe it doesn’t want you to fix it. Maybe it doesn’t want you to scrape off the charred outer crumbs of disappointment with the old butter knife of regret. Maybe, just maybe, if it had wanted to come out golden brown, it would have.