Cheese Toastie

Grilled cheese sandwiches appear in cookbooks from ancient Rome, where bread was toasted over charcoal and layered with cheese. The Roman food writer Apicius described "aliter dulcia" — bread fried in oil with cheese — in his 4th-century cookbook. But the modern toasted sandwich owes its mass adoption to two 20th-century developments: sliced bread (1928) and electric sandwich toasters, which became household fixtures across Australia and the UK from the 1970s onward.

The science of a great toastie depends on one thing above all others: cheese selection. The ideal toastie cheese must melt smoothly without turning greasy or rubbery. Mozzarella, with its high moisture content and elastic protein structure, is prized for its long, pull-away strands. Processed sliced cheese melts uniformly because it has been engineered to do so. Together — as in our Classic Toastie — they create the perfect melt: creamy, stretchy, and fully encased in golden, pressed bread.

Our Classic Toastie uses mozzarella and sliced cheese on Turkish bread — denser and chewier than white sandwich bread, it toasts to a crisper shell while staying soft at the centre. Optional add-ons of tomato and beef mortadella turn it from snack into meal.