Easy Sweet French Toast Recipe

What’s more satisfying and indulgent than French toast? After all, it’s thick bread soaked in eggs, fried in butter, topped with maple syrup and a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

French toast is one of the special occasion breakfast dishes. Serve it to your house guests. Enjoy it on New Year’s Day (with champagne and berries!). Or treat yourself on a cold Sunday morning when the day’s plans involve watching TV.

French toast is easy and versatile

This dish, also known as Eggy Bread in parts of the U.K., is very easy to prepare. The basic process involves mixing up a batter, dunking thick slices of bread in that batter, and then frying those slices in melted butter.

You can modify or substitute most of the ingredients too.

French toast substitutions and modifications

Bread. I like French toast prepared with day-old, sliced French bread, but you can use whatever bread you have. Some notes to keep in mind when you’re substituting bread:

• Thick, sliced bread like Texas toast results in a “prettier” dish because the pieces are uniform.
• You’ll lose some of the delicious texture with a thinner bread. A thick slice — around 1 inch — gives you a crispy exterior and almost creamy soft interior. You miss out on that various a bit with, say, a sandwich slice.
• A whole grain or multigrain loaf you can slice yourself is an option. Whole grain breads are naturally denser, so the interior of your French toast won’t be as fluffy. You will get a very hearty, satisfying meal though.

Milk. Try almond milk, oat milk, or cashew milk instead of dairy milk. Or, if you’re feeling super indulgent, try half and half. Almond milk is my favorite, as it adds flavor without being too heavy.

Sugar. This recipe calls for 1/3-cup sugar. The result is a sweet French toast that doesn’t need extra syrup or powdered sugar. You could reduce or omit the sugar for a more savory version.

Seasonings. Cinnamon and vanilla are classic choices for seasoning your French Toast. But you can experiment here too. Try pumpkin pie spice or a bit of orange zest to take your toast to the next level.

Toppings. Since this recipe is fairly sweet, I like it without any toppings. My husband, who has a wicked sweet tooth, adds maple syrup and powdered sugar. You could also top French toast with berries, crushed nuts, bananas, nutella, or whipped cream.

Making French toast

First, choose your bread. If the bread is very soft, slice it and let it sit out unwrapped for an hour to a day, depending on the bread. You want the bread to be a hint stale. With fresh French bread, limit this step to a couple hours at most. You don’t want your bread to turn into a giant crouton.

When your bread is ready to go, mix up your batter. The ingredients are eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Melt butter in a pan. This recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of butter. You’ll see in the video that the first slices soak up a lot of butter, leaving less for the later slices. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. The early slices will be delicious and rich, while the later ones will be lighter. If you want consistency across the board, start with half the butter and then add more in between batches.

Dip your bread. I like to put the batter in a pie or cake pan. That gives you a larger, flat surface for soaking your bread. Dunk one slice of bread in the batter at a time and let it soak for 30 seconds. Flip and repeat.

Fry your bread in butter. Pull the bread out, let the extra batter run off, and fry it up in the hot pan with melted butter. It takes about a minute or two of frying to get a golden crisp on the bread. Once you see that gold color develop, flip and repeat on the other side.

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