Texas toast--another tasty accident

San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle:

A miscalculation is credited with fostering the creation of "Texas Toast," the oversized grilled bread slices that now regularly appear beside chicken fried steak and other delicacies served across the South.

Legend has it that in 1941, Royce Hailey ordered several loaves of wide-sliced bread from the Rainbo Bakery to see if toasting it would tickle the taste buds of customers at the Pig Stand Restaurants he managed around Beaumont.

"But when they went to put in a toaster, it was too thick to fit," recalled Hailey's son, Richard Hailey of San Antonio. "They didn't want to waste the bread so my dad and one of the cooks suggested, 'Why don't we butter it and cook it on the grill?' "

The taste and dimensions of the newborn dish quickly caught on, said Hailey, who followed in his late father's footsteps as president of the Pig Stand eateries that opened in 1921 and recently went belly up.

"They tested it on the customers, and they got an overwhelming response that it was very good so they said, 'I think we've got a winner here.' " he said.

The behemoth toast is still a favorite at the only Pig Stand that's left, located on Broadway Street in San Antonio.

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The chicken fried steak it accompanies was also an accident. Legend has it that a waitress left out the comma on an order for chicken and a fried steak. The cook dipped the steak in the chicken batter and the rest is a tasty history. You should also know that Frito's and chile were invented in San Antonio too. It took a while longer for someone to put the two together to make Frito pie.