Abnorm, thanks for your fine porn, and contributions to the noble art of bread burning.
Here's a simple kludge to improve one's bagel toasting:
My pan is too small to toast both halves without some minor surgery (it's trivial to reassemble):
While waiting for it to toast, I used a spoon to press down, which is tedious, then I suddenly remembered the gadgets designed to "press" tortillas and other items to speed up cooking, and lusted for one.
Since I'm counting pennies, immediately suppressed the lust, Brain went into Creative Mode, wondered what I could kludge, and looked around...
... and found a pretty good
field expedient bagel press:
Here's the finished bagel (after flipping):
I still need to perfect my technique, but not bad for my first try.
By then, I was almost out of bagels, but will buy another bag (@Aldi) just before my next boondocking.
Techie Notes:
I did have water in the kettle, so it felt like the perfect weight.
I used about
3 to 4 grams of butane to toast a single bagel (sample size of two bagels (I did toast one or two others, but did not separately measure the toast fuel)).
That works out to about 3 to 4 cents each.
Next time, I will probably try a folded paper towel between the kettle and bagel, so I won't have to clean the kettle bottom (then I'll use the paper towel as my plate/cleanup).