French Toast / Pain Perdu: The Breakfast of Champions

French Toast

This weekend Chelsea and Sacha were home. Sunday breakfast instead of the brocante. French Toast or Pain Perdu as they say in France, was the plan.

Day old baguettes as I have said before, can be used as a hammer… but the French had a better idea when they came up with Pain Perdu, or Lost Bread.

 

FRENCH TOAST OVEN

Cut the baguette in oversized bites, put them in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl whip four eggs, with 1 cup of half and half (half cream, half milk), 2 tablespoons of vanilla,

1/2 of a cup of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (or nutmeg).

Pour the egg mixture over the bread and mix thoroughly. 

 

Baked French Toast

Butter a baking dish with a heavy hand. Sprinkle half of a cup of brown sugar on the buttered pan, then add slices of one apple (any other fruit will do, or no fruit at all) over the brown sugar.

Pour the egg batttered bread mixture in the buttered brown sugared dish.

Bake at 300 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve warm with maple syrup.

 

French Toast Pain Perdu

Sunday Breakfast, Baked French Toast… 

I had some but not as much as I wanted, not even half of what I wanted.

Sacha was happy about that, less for me, meant more for him…

 

Slow Food in Fast Motion

Though he had his Dad to contend with, and he my friends is a fast eater even by American standards.

Unbelievably fast. 

I often ask him after he has swallowed his entire meal in five seconds flat,

"Was it a race of the Breakfast of Champions? What did you eat?"

In which he replies,

"Good."

It is a good thing he is cute, and that I like to cook.

Otherwise as my brother's use to say, "Heads would roll."

 

French Toast good to the last bite

 

French Toast baked in the oven, good to the last bite.

 



Comments

30 responses to “French Toast / Pain Perdu: The Breakfast of Champions”

  1. I am drooling onto my keyboard ….. 😉
    Regarding French Toast, I am rather timid: still make it with toast, dipping the crust first in milk, then the whole slice into egg beaten with a bit of milk. Stack it, turn the stack when finished with dipping. Slowly fry them in butter on both sides, serve with a dab of butter and real maple sirup.
    Come to think of it, Austrians make a sort of souffle’ the way you make French Toast. They add a few raisins to the mix and beat the egg whites. Sometimes different cultures solve leftover problems in similar fashion.

  2. Franca Bollo fell into a diabetic coma just reading that.

  3. *lol*
    (I lost count of the amount of sugar around the third line)

  4. This reminds me of a bread pudding!

  5. what a special occasion to serve this wonderful “pain perdu”… i can’t wait to try it. thanks for posting the recipe.
    have you tried oceanview bette’s souffle panckaes in berkeley? i have a take on this shepherd’s pie:
    serving 4: 4 eggs
    4 cups of flower..oops flour
    4 cups of milk
    mix in blender for 5 minutes (very important)
    in the meantime melt a paella pan or ovenproof dish with 4 oz of butter.
    bake @ 500 degrees for 30 minutes. it will rise like a souffle.
    serve immediately with heated maple syrup topping or powdered suger w/ a squeeze of lemon… fresh berries w/ whipped cream is also delicious.
    lana cano kloch

  6. I love French Toast. The way you make it seems to me less complicated than frying single slices in the pan. Will try it for sure.

  7. Sounds delicious and I would really like to try it – – but I wonder what a cup of half and half is? I am from NZ and it’s not a term I’ve heard of before.

  8. My favorite breakfast! I always judge breakfast restaurants by how good their French toast is. Your recipe sounds magnificent.

  9. mmm will make this for mes infants in the morning. Thanks Corey. We are living in Toulouse for 2months and i was wondering what to do with the rock hard old ones. Sometimes in the boulangerie my eyes are bigger than our stomachs. Hee hee hee.
    *

  10. It does now that you mention it. lol. But it isn’t.

  11. This sounds wonderful. Definitely going to try it!

  12. kathleen (OR)

    Definitely need to try this, my family loves french toast but it takes a long time when you cook one slice at a time. (I need to buy a griddle…)
    This recipe is written down and waiting for my kids to visit from college. Can’t believe I now have both by boys in college…

  13. Yummmmm, that sounds so good. Love the idea of adding apples too.

  14. A cup equals eight ounces, so a cup and a half would be twelve ounces. Hope that helps!

  15. RebeccaNYC

    Is it the measurement or the product that is confusing? Half and Half is half cream, half milk. 1 cup is about .24 litres.

  16. RebeccaNYC

    I made one the other day, and put blueberries on it when it was done. YUM! I make bread pudding the same way, only it is thicker. (and sometimes I put it in a pan of water in the oven to steam it) Anyway you make it, it’s good. (I have even made it with Almond milk when I had no regular milk or cream)

  17. Barbara Snow

    It’s a mixture of half milk and half cream.

  18. Definately will try this ,,,,sounds heavenly
    Might try this for next weekend when my family comes home for Thanksgiving ( Canada)
    Thanks for sharing

  19. No can do as I’m a gluten free gal!But it looks amazing!
    Corey,I’m here in Brdeaux……thinking of you and family!Countryside is bellisima with the grapes ready for harvesting!Wish I could skip down and say ciao!
    Xxxx

  20. Thanks Barbara! I shall try it next weekend.

  21. Thanks Rebecca – so it’s a mixture of milk and cream. Will try this weekend.

  22. My family love ‘pain perdu’ as well, and ‘bread and butter pudding’. I always used to get a bit grumbly about cooking the pain perdu over the hob whilst everyone else gobbled it up at the table until for a work’s christmas present we were given a electric ‘crèpe griddle’. Now I pop it on the table and cook and eat along with everyone else. So sociable and so yummy. This sounds like a great alternative recipe for the oven. I never thought of that!

  23. Will try. Used my stale bread last night toasted pieces w o. Oil, toms, parm, purple onion. Panzanella. YumM

  24. My dad took up making Bread Pudding in his last decade, and it became one of his specialties. He’d make extra casseroles of it to deliver to his sister across town and to a long-ago ice skating partner who’d become a shut-in. If he had leftover stale doughnuts or Danish pastry, he’d cut those up to toss into the bread mixture, too (yummm!). Whenever I was visiting, I’d always pick the raisins out of my serving, since I don’t like them (yes, I know, a shocking admission for a native Californian!).

  25. Florence Crowder

    We, in Louisiana, prepare it the way that Merisi does. The French here call it lost bread.

  26. I was looking for a French Toast recipe yesterday morning. This one sounds so good.
    My son is exactly the same as Sacha – I keep telling him that he eats so fast that his stomach hasn’t had time to tell his mind he’s full. Good thing they both have the metabolism to eat like that.
    I made gluten-free pancakes instead and sure enough he ate it all.

  27. Ah, a great way to use those rock hard chunks of French bread I usually end up feeding the birds! Another great bread for either French toast or bread pudding is Italian Pannetone…oh boy does it make delicious bread pudding! In addition to whipped eggs, cream, sugar, vanilla I add a touch of orange liquer. When it comes out of the oven, drizzle maple syrup over it…YUM!

  28. Yum, never made it in the oven before, I’m gonna try it soon.

  29. Corey,
    I plan to make this on Sunday. Just wanted to make sure the baking temperature is 300F not 300 C which would be higher than my oven heats.

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