San Francisco is the land of outrageously expensive toast.
Last year the internet trended with articles about $4 toast or $6 toast but the fervor over avocado toasts has reached hysterical heights.
I visited the Ferry Building, as I often do, and tried out one of the most outrageously expensive avocado toasts in the city at Frog Hollow. Admittedly, it was divine. The avocado was perfectly ripe, the bread had the perfect chewiness and toasted not too hard to become too difficult to bite through, causing a cascade of luscious avocado slices to slide off onto your black pants. A hint of garlic overlays the bread, and the entire toast is dappled with salt, pepper, and olive oil.
This beauty comes in at $10.99.
While it is awesome to be like one of the cool kids and fork out two fins and a buck for someone else to make me lunch, I would rather reduce my wallet at the market and shop for the ingredients and make avocado toast myself.
Let’s do the math.
| Grocery Store cost ingredient outlay | At home per toast cost | |||||
| Acme Herb Slab | loaf = 4 servings | 4.99 | 1 serving | 1.25 | ||
| Avocado | each | 1.50 | 1 avocado | 1.50 | ||
| Stonehouse olive oil, house blend | liter = 67 Tbl. | 14.00 | 1 Tbl. | 0.21 | ||
| Garlic | head = 10 cloves | 0.96 | 1 clove | 0.10 | ||
| Maldon salt | box = 8.5 oz | 5.99 | 1/2 tsp. | 0.06 | ||
| McCormick’s black pepper in grinder | grinder = .85 oz | 4.29 | 1/4 tsp. | 0.02 | ||
| Total | 31.73 | 3.13 | ||||
I used Instacart to price out the ingredients at Whole Foods, while knowing that if I shopped at the farmer’s market or at the Ferry Building I would have received a discount for paying cash for the bread, and the other ingredients can be found cheaply depending upon which farm you source the avocados and garlic.
Last Saturday at the Ferry building I bought a loaf of Marla Bakery’s molasses oatmeal bread ($5), a head of garlic ($.25), and two avocados ($3), and made avocado toast at work on Monday. This delay was necessitated by the ripeness of the avocados.
If you haven’t tried Marla’s molasses oatmeal bread as toast you need to rectify this immediately. I do feel slightly ashamed for not baking my own oatmeal molasses bread, as I often do, but I had a busy weekend. I used salt, pepper, and a small bottle of olive oil from the office kitchen and the toaster and made this:
I was in a hurry and didn’t take the beautiful care to arrange the avocado like the staff at Frog Hollow, and my slice of bread got a little trashed during my morning commute on MUNI, but nonetheless, it tasted fantastic and I was the envy of my boss and coworkers. And I saved $7.86.
The only vaguely tricky part is getting a ripe avocado, so I recommend visiting a farmer’s market and asking the farm to help you pick an avocado out. They can advise you when it will be ripe to eat, and usually they are spot on.
Enjoy your avocado toast!
Recipe: Not Insanely Priced Avocado Toast
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