French toast is the perfect way to use stale bread. The recipe can be traced back to Roman times, and it continues to be popular today. Though you can buy frozen versions, there is nothing like home made.
This centuries-old recipe was enjoyed by all, according to Answers.Com. "Culinary evidence confirms 'French toast' was not just a food for the poor." Ancient recipes use white bread with the crusts removed -- a recipe for the wealthy. French toast has survived for centuries and the recipe has spread world-wide.
Hungarians call it bundas kenyer, notes Answers.Com, which means coated bread. Portugese call it rabanadas or fatias douradas, for golden slices of bread. Dutch call it wentelteefjes, which means turned around britches. Over the years, cooks added other ingredients to the batter, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla.
"Monet's Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet" contains a tantalizing recipe for French toast. Monet loved eating almost as much as he loved painting. Many of the recipes in this cook book are written in his own hand. Monet also considered them part of his family history. Pain Perdu is made with day-old brioche (an egg bread), eggs, milk, confectioner's sugar, and two tablespoons of rum.
An early edition of the "Joy of Cooking," by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, contains a recipe for French Tomato Toast. Bread is dipped in condensed tomato soup, fried, and topped with cheese sauce -- an unusual idea. In case you're wondering, the cook book also contains the classic recipe.
A "New York Times" blog published a recipe for Spanish French toast. According to the writer, it is a "knockout dessert," as moist as bread pudding, and nearly as rich as custard. It, too, uses stale bread -- challah or brioche. The bread is soaked in milk to soften it, then dipped in beaten eggs and sugar. Instead of frying the bread in a skillet, cubes of bread are shallow-fried in a half inch of olive oil. The fried cubes are sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar, honey, or maple syrup.
Though you can make French toast in the oven, the results are more like a souffle than the original dish. I love good, old-fashioned, cooked-on-a-griddle French toast. Raspberries are my favorite fruit, so I put the two together, and created Raspberry Burst French toast. It is made with fat free milk, egg substitute, whole grain white bread, and sugar-free raspberry jam.
Ingredients
3/4 cup fat free milk
1/2 cup egg substitute
1 large egg, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
8 slices whole grain white bread
1/2 cup sugar-free raspberry jam
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons honey
1 pint fresh raspberries
Method
Whisk milk, egg substitute, egg, and almond extract together. (Make sure there are no streaks of egg white in the batter.) Dip bread in batter and cook over medium heat, or in a 350-degree skillet, until brown on both sides. Prepare the sauce while the toast is cooking. Put jam, water, and honey in a heat-proof glass measuring cup. Stir with a spoon and microwave for 30-40 seconds. Place a few fresh raspberries on top of each piece of toast and drizzle with raspberry sauce. Makes 8 one-slice servings.
Copyright 2009 by Harriet Hodgson
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