Top, bottom or crust, which is it?
Writer and linguist Wim Daniëls opened a can of worms when he innocently asked on Twitter: what do you call the first and last slice of a loaf of bread? The top-slice people go all out against the bottom-slice crowd, and apparently there’s also something involving crusts and breasts…
At our house, it was always the top slice, the first slice of bread from the bag. Ideally, you wanted to eat it first, with plenty of butter and then sprinkles or peanut butter, but that wasn’t allowed: the top and bottom slices had to stay on the bread until the end, because they protect the other slices from drying out.
Top, bottom or crust?
Nonsense, almost everyone keeps their bread in the freezer these days and takes out the slices they’re going to eat, right? That means the top slice has lost its protective function, so you can immediately tuck into it when you’ve bought fresh bread (hooray!)
Bottom slice as a trending topic
Or do you eat the bottom slice of the bread? According to about half of Twitter, that first slice is called the ‘bottom’. And so the hashtag bottom trended on Twitter for an entire day. Opponents insist that a bottom is the end of a sausage. Others add some nuance to the discussion: the bottom is the very last back slice of the bread, and the top slice is the first. Are you still following?
Here’s another thing: bakers know it’s called a bottom, but they teach the staff in the shop to say ‘top slice’, because that sounds much more polite, according to posts on Twitter. Is it true? Which baker can say something sensible about this?
Heated debate
And crust? That’s only what they call it when the top slices (or bottoms, depending on where you stand in this heated debate) are cut far too thin by the baker’s bread-slicing machine. Those thin strips that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t spread butter on, let alone get sprinkles to stick to. Luckily, there’s a real top slice behind it (or: you know), so it all ends harmlessly.
Lussiknie
Most people immediately dismiss the word ‘crust’ for that slice of bread. Crusts, no, that’s the outer edge of the bread or your pizza. Those crusts that children want removed from their sandwiches otherwise they won’t eat them, those. Although the front and back of a loaf are formally the same as the crust, you really can’t call them that.
Inside tip: FavorFlav’s Sharon learned at home that eating the top slice of the bread gives you big boobs, and my mother always rhymed, ‘crusts give you breasts’, but without any scientific evidence, we’re filing that under ‘probably not’. Does the inside of the bread have its own name, by the way, or is it simply called ‘bread’?
To stir up the discussion a little more: in Leeuwarden, it’s called a ‘ploske’. Beat that.
There is, incidentally, one thing about which there really is no doubt: Corgi butt buns are the most delicious bottom you’ll ever eat.
