You will make some of the best (if not the best) French toast of your life! Top tips: Use dried out/stale bread, make a delicious slightly sweet vanilla custard mixture to dip it in, and cook slowly to develop a caramelized French toast that tastes like if crème brûlée, caramel, and bread had an amazing threesome!
Homemade bread works very well, click on a link here if you want to make your own:
Sourdough White Bread (by hand) (what I used in this recipe)
Important: The bread should be sliced thick and dried overnight to become stale. This way, you'll get a crispy outside and soft non-soggy interior. Trust me, it's very good. An alternative to drying overnight putting in a 300°F oven on a rack for 10-20 minutes.
The recipe is here, and pictures of the process are below:
Ingredients:
4 pieces homemade (or store bought) bread, sliced 3/4 to 1 inch thick
2 large eggs
½ cup milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 - ½ teaspoon cinnamon
Butter
Toppings (optional): Syrup, Powdered sugar, fruit
Directions:
The night before leave the slices of bread out overnight on a cooling rack to properly dry out. French toast is traditionally called Pain perdu, or “lost bread” and it’s supposed to be made with stale bread.
Preheat a griddle to 325°F. Or heat a pan on low-medium heat.
Blend or mix the eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar very well with a blender or fork.
Melt butter in the pan or the griddle, you can use oil instead. Dip the bread into the egg mixture, trying to soak up a lot without letting it get too soggy. Flip and repeat on both sides.
Place on the pan/griddle. Cook, checking the underside occasionally. Flip over when it's nicely brown and slightly crispy and cook the other side. About 5-10 minutes total cooking time.
You will need to add more butter before you fry the next batch.
Serve warm with powdered sugar and syrup, or fruit, if desired.
1-2 servings.
Bread I sliced and left to dry out on a rack overnight. They were about 3/4 inches thick.
Mix your custard together! I used 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, most of which sticks it the first slice so you may need to mix in a bit more cinnamon before dipping each slice of bread.
After dipping and starting to fry in butter!
And flip! Continue cooking until it's brown and slightly crispy on both sides.
And serve! With your desired toppings of course! Obviously cooking one slice at a time isn't very efficient. A larger pan/griddle is much faster! Just make sure you still cook them at a low-medium temp.
Oh fuck yes