Brunch: French Toast

I love breakfast. Since I am cooking for one, I tend to make a lot of easy small meals. But I also tend to eat breakfast for dinner quite a bit. One of my favorite breakfast foods is french toast. Years of practice has helped me tweak the classic recipe that my mom uses for my own favorite style of french toast. I am including my own recipe, 7 mistakes people make when making french toast thanks to Bon Appetit, and a few of my other favorite recipes. 

Rachelle's Classic French Toast
serving size: 4 

• 6 large eggs
• ¾ cup heavy cream
• ¾ cup whole milk
• Pinch of  salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla 
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon 
• 6-7 thick slices challah, brioche, or Texas toast 
• 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided, plus more for serving
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
• Pure maple syrup, strawberries, blueberries, etc. or powdered sugar (for serving)
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Directions:

• Preheat oven to 250°. Lightly beat eggs, cream, milk, and salt in a large shallow baking dish or bowl. Add a slice of bread, turn to coat, then press down gently on bread until you feel it start to soak up custard mixture. Flip bread and soak on second side, pressing down gently from time to time, until bread is saturated but not soggy.
• Heat 1 Tbsp. butter and 1 Tbsp. oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When foaming subsides, carefully lift slice of bread from custard, letting excess drip back into dish, and cook in skillet until golden brown .. Transfer toast to a wire rack set inside a rimmed baking sheet and keep warm in oven while you cook remaining slices of bread with 1 Tbsp. butter and remaining 1 Tbsp. oil.
• Serve French toast with butter, maple syrup, fresh fruit, and/or powdered sugar.
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7 Most Common French Toast Cooking Mistakes  -Bon Appetit

1. Adding too much dairy and sugar to the custard
Don’t go overboard with the dairy. If there’s too much, the egg in the mixture won’t cook, meaning wet, soggy, bread. You want the French toast to be dry on the surface with slightly crisp edges. As for the sugar, if you’re adding maple syrup, honey, or dusting the toast with powdered sugar on the plate, you don’t need the custard to be too sweet.

2. Not mixing the custard thoroughly
You don’t want pieces of egg white showing up on your perfectly browned slices. Make sure to whisk the custard until the dairy, eggs, and spices (if using) are well combined.

3. Not choosing the right bread
French toast is like bread pudding. It soaks up a custard for a creamy texture on the inside and a slightly crunchy texture on the outside. If the bread is very thin, it will be too flimsy to hold together when dipped in the custard. If it’s too thick, it will never cook to the center. The ideal thickness for a slice of French toast is 3/4″ to 1″ thick. And make sure to pick a kind of bread that’s both spongy and sturdy enough not to fall apart during cooking. Brioche, challah, or a Pullman loaf are all ideal, which is why you’ll see them on brunch menus so often.

4. Under-soaking the bread
Lots of home cooks quickly dip each side of the bread in the custard before throwing it in the pan. The bread has to soak in the egg mixture; you want it to penetrate the bread for a soft, custardy center. This requires some firm yet gentle pressure—and let the bread soak for at least 15-20 minutes.

5. Using too much heat or not enough
French toast is not a steak—you don’t want to scorch the surface. Since there’s sugar in the egg mixture (the custard), it will caramelize and burn quickly. Plus, the inside won’t cook entirely, and you’ll be left with a burnt-yet-soggy piece of French toast. Conversely, if you cook it on too low a temperature, the bread will dry out and you won’t have that nice, soft center that makes French toast so decadent. Cook three to four minutes per side over medium heat.

6. Not preheating the pan
If the pan isn’t hot enough when you put your first slice in, the custard spreads out, forming a “foot” on the bottom of the French toast. When the pan is hot enough, the batter won’t have time to seep; the custard will start cooking as soon as it hits the pan.

7. Only using butter
Give the pan a light coating of neutral oil and butter. This will help prevent the butter from burning. And make sure to wipe out the pan after every batch, then use a fresh combination of neutral oil and butter. Otherwise, the butter will burn and little black bits will stick to the next batch of French toast.

Check out this recipe for overnight french toast casserole. We call this skier's french toast in our family because we normally only make it when we are on ski trips in Aspen! So easy and perfect for cold mornings! 

A few years ago, my mom made a peanut butter stuffed french toast. Two pieces of bread, with peanut butter in the middle, and dipped into the egg-milk custard before being put on the skillet. It was awesome, but too much peanut butter in the middle so if you ever replicate this recipe, make sure you do a thin layer of peanut butter. Also you can use nutella. 

And a recipe I want to try... Vanilla Maple French toast with warm berry preserves..

You know you are in your mid-twenties when...

Upon graduation from college, I find that people do one of two things. They either gracefully morph into adulthood with their new job, apartment, and horrid bills/ loan payments that continually come every month…Or, they fight the system and try to pretend they are still in college and refuse to embrace the impending years closer to their 30s. It’s funny how much you change in such a short span of time, slowly at first and next thing you know, you are signing your first lease without your parents, having another birthday thinking “my parents were married for two years” at your age, and looking around and seeing rings, babies, jobs, etc. This series is going to be devoted to those little changes that I am just noticing about myself. Those, you know you are in your mid-twenties (I am 24) when….

And todays post: You know you are in your mid-twenties when you no longer subscribe to Cosmo, Glamour, and InStyle. You let those subscriptions go for Southern Living, Bon Appetite, and Coastal Living. When did that happen?!  My Cosmo was the first to go, it said essentially the same thing each month, then InStyle- just because I needed groceries rather than drooling over a Dolce dress that I could never afford, and last Glamour. I still religiously follow Hollywood drama and celebs but just online. Now I find myself perusing stacks of home décor, garden, food, hosting ideas etc. I enjoy fantasizing about what a room will look like in my house, what color palettes would work, and how to make a house masculine and feminine, tied up in.. maybe a bow? As I am preparing to decorate my apartment, I gladly and am almost giddy looking though Southern Living, Pinterest, etc. for inspiration. (Even if it’s on a budget)  When did I start getting dreamy eyed looking at Martha Stewart Living and summery pasta salads..I don’t know, but I like it.