We at Jacob Bromwell encourage you to find a comfortable, quiet place to relax as you prepare to travel back in time. Life was rugged and such inventions as our vintage toaster quickly became a necessity as word of its existence spread throughout the Wild West. Luckily, consider yourself amongst the chosen ones who will know what is was like in the old fashioned days when toast was a part of almost every meal from those who worked down in the coal mines to traveling on horseback at a time when a dime a day was considered a descent salary. Now that you’re comfortable, allow me to guide you on this adventure as we travel back in time…

Way back in 1819, nearly 200 years ago, Jacob Bromwell, inventor, was the only pioneer of his day known to perfect the Pyramid Toaster, now also known as our old toaster or vintage toaster amongst you history buffs. Our camping toaster has been known to serve such uses as providing substance to beef, bacon, or fish to treating indigestion or nausea when what was cooked in our Frontier Frying Pan wasn’t quite cooked enough. Back in the old days when our country was young and the west was still being pioneered by such folks as Lewis & Clark, Jacob Bromwell somehow knew his camping toaster would not only be useful for the cowboy hunting buffalo, but those folks living along the river catching trout and salmon.

We believe knowing the history of the toaster would provide a further appreciation of our old toaster. Fast forward to another time. Electric toasters have been in existence for less than 100 years. Yet, people have been consuming bread for the past 6,000 years, and people have been toasting bread since the time of the Romans. Toasting bread makes it crunchier and preserves it, an especially important characteristic for early civilizations. The process of scorching bread to preserve it spread through many cultures. The word toast comes from the Latin Torrere, Tostum - to scorch or burn. The Romans, in their conquests, took their love of toasted bread with them and spread the custom farther, even up into Britain. Later, English colonists brought the tradition to the Americas. There were a variety of methods for making toast in pre-electric times, from using the hot hearthstone, to putting bread on multi-purpose toasting forks and holding it over a fire, to employing fancy, hinged bread holders that could be attached to the side of a fireplace and swung into the flame. Before the invention of the electric toaster, bread was toasted over an open fire with the help of a variety of simple tools. Toasting bread does more than just preserve it. It changes its nature; bread becomes sweeter, crunchier, and the perfect surface on which to spread all sorts of things including jam, jelly, and peanut butter….mmm, mmm good, and good for you, too!