To propose a toast - raising the glass or toasting the bread?

In England in the old days, when a toast was made, the guest would pass his cup of wine and a piece of toasted bread around the table. Each of the guests took a sip from the cup in honour of the person to whom the toast was made and then passed it on. The speaker then finally drank the cup and ate the bread. Later, the toast itself was called a "toast".

In Shakespeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor" Falstaff says: "Go fetch me a quart of sack, put a toast into it". By "sack" is meant not a sack but the "vino secco", i.e. the "dry" wine made from berries dried on the vine.