Slow breakfast. Nut butter, marmite and jelly toasts

Bread toasts are always a good idea for breakfast: filling, delicious and healthy at the same time, toasts are still one of the most popular choices in the morning. The smell of toasted bread is the perfect way to start the day, especially if you pair it with some good coffee or tea. Here are are favourite recipes.

Toast with vegan nut butters

Butter and jam is a classic combination, but if you need a boost of energy, you can also try all the vegan alternatives made with nuts. Of course, a peanut butter and jelly is one of the best pairings ever, but try to give a chance to almond, hazelnut or cashew butter: these rich and tasty creams have a smooth consistency, and a bit more liquid than peanut butter, but they are perfectly suitable for spreading. You can then add some jam or honey on top, or even agave syrup for a vegan recipe: plus, don't forget to use some fresh fruits.

Buttered toast with marmite

Love it or hate it. It's with this famous slogan that Marmite has become popular throughout the UK and beyond. We are talking about one of the most controversial products ever, capable of polarizing the opinion of consumers between admirers and detractors. The spread of brewer's yeast extract is often used at breakfast on a slice of buttered toast. With its sticky consistency and dark colour, Marmite was discovered by chance by a German scientist, Justus Liebig, who at the end of the 19th century accidentally concentrated brewer's yeast, only to realize that it could be edible. The first company to produce it, however, was the British Marmite Food Company, founded in 1902 in Burton-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire county, and which bought yeast directly from the many breweries around town.

Peanut butter and jelly toast

Nothing better than a sandwich slathered with peanut butter and jelly for an American-style snack, one of the favourite pairings in the United States that is becoming increasingly popular in Italy as well. But who invented peanut butter? Legend has it that the ancient Inca natives of South America were the first to grind peanuts into a cream, but another theory holds that it was John Harvey Kellogg (creator of corn flakes) who first created the recipe at the end of the 19th century. Another hypothesis is this: A St. Louis doctor perfected the preparation as a protein substitute for his older toothless patients who could not chew meat. In any case, in America it has been on the market since 1904, the year in which it was presented at the world exhibition in St. Louis, and immediately became famous among the armed forces: it is purported that it was the army that decreed the success of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an essential snack for the troops during WWII.

by Michela Becchi