Baked Challah French Toast

I love breakfast foods! When I got to a diner I'm always torn between ordering breakfast or lunch. I love french onion soup but give me some french toast and a poached egg and I'm so happy. It all depends on what everyone else is ordering though. If I am sitting there enjoying my soup and then I get a whiff of bacon and eggs...deep regret. I'm just so indecisive when it comes to this!

Last year Steve and I got a few couples together to go apple picking. Everyone met at our place first for breakfast. That was so much fun for me! I experimented with baked french toast and it was a huge hit! So last weekend when my childhood friend stayed over with her Fiance there was a request for a repeat of this dish. I was happy to make it again but the only problem was that I combined a few different recipes and never wrote down what I did. That was before I started this lovely little blog that forces me to write down recipes! I did find some notes scribbled onto one paper but not enough information was there. Now that I made it again I think I left out a step. Oops. I didn't bake the french toast again with the topping which is what I think I was supposed to do. I didn't have the topping in the oven at all. I'm pretty sure that's wrong now that I think about it. I also feel like 3 cups of milk is a lot. I will try it next time with a little less because it seemed a little wet in the middle and it was cooking at 425 and got nice and browned on top. I think in the future I will cook it for about an hour at 350.

The taste was great! I don't think it was missing anything at all! I would absolutely make this again and now that I have this written down I will be able to perfect it. Wish me Luck!


Ingredients:

French Toast:

1 loaf Challah Bread, cut into 1 inch slices
3 cups whole milk
3 eggs, beaten
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon

Topping:

1/2 cup butter, melted
2 tbsp dark corn syrup or maple syrup
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts


Directions:

1. In a baking dish layer slices of bread so that they are touching and rip a slice of bread into pieces to fill in any holes. Make two layers.

2. In a bowl combine eggs, milk, sugar, extracts, nutmeg and cinnamon. Pour this mixture over bread. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

3. Next morning, preheat oven to 350. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan melt butter and take off the heat. Add corn syrup/maple syrup, brown sugar and nuts. Stir to combine and it will make a paste.

4. Spread mixture over bread that soaked up eggs and milk.

Bake for approximately 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.


Like I said above, I did this wrong. I baked it before I put the topping on. This is what it looked like puffed up and golden.



Here's the topping!

Breakfast of Champions

When I was a child there were mornings when I woke up and just wanted to be in Nanny's company. Even before I was old enough to understand why, I knew that Nanny was special. There were days that I'd pretend to be sick so I could stay home from school and hang out with Nanny. That meant special food all day long. One of the special things Nanny made for breakfast was french toast. I bet you're thinking that french toast is not that special. Well, her's was different and that's what made it special to me, my brother and my sister. The main difference in Nanny's French Toast was that you didn't put syrup on it. Nanny never had syrup in the house. There were many "American" things that we liked but Nanny would never touch. Syrup was one of them. Her topping for french toast was the same as her topping on her zucchini flowers. Granulated Sugar. These days since we are always watching our fat intake, a sugar topping just isn't practical. Today though, we are honoring Nanny so this is what she did and this is what I did.

Nanny usually used some white italian bread (loaf style sliced bread with some seeds...never wonder bread) but if she had some leftover bread like I did today, she would use that too. Mix in an egg with some milk, cinnamon, a little sugar and vanilla. I had a leftover round Italian bread from Whole foods and I cut two thick slices. I used two eggs since the bread was thicker. When the bread absorbed most of the egg mixture I fried it in a nonstick pan. Normally, I'd use Pam nonstick cooking spray or if I'm feeling like being indulgent I'd use a little butter. But Nanny never touched either of these things. Butter was a forbidden ingredient in her kitchen. It was very rare that she would use it. She claimed she was allergic but we all know she wasn't. She just didn't like it. Nanny used oil a lot. For most dishes she used Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I guess this is why her skin was always so soft. She never worried about her weight...she used a ton of oil but never had any issues with clogged arteries or high cholesterol. I guess this what they call the Mediterranean diet. So back to the french toast. I fried the french toast in a little bit of canola oil until it was a nice golden color. Sprinkle that with some granulated sugar and you're all set! I figured with all that thick bread I should balance it off with a sunny side up egg. Afterall, Nanny did like the combination of sweet and savory!