Oh, on the outset it always seems like a good idea. Some eggs, a little milk, a smidge of cinnamon. Whisk it all together, dip, place on griddle, flip, butter, syrup…
WTF? This is NOT French toast- This is a piece of bread with fried egg around it! :mad:
No matter what I do, or how I try it… It is never right. I know it can be done. I have certainly eaten homemade French Toast every bit as yummy as some of the best breakfast places I’ve been to. Somehow or other though, the secret evades me.
Normally I am not a bad cook. Typically i’m the one who makes dinner and things around here. I’m adept at following a recipe. I’m an avid food network watcher- any tip I can pick up from Alton B… I incorporate to enormous benefit. I’m somewhat of a wannabe foodie. So my inability to at least make an adequate replica of what is supposed to be a simple food is frustrating.
My goal- tomorrow- is to make some breakfast for the family. And like a crazy person- I will again attempt my breakfast bane! So I turn to you, my helpful clan of Straight Dope Foodies! Please- what am I doing wrong? How do I fix it?
Try three things:
[ol]
[li]Add sugar to the coating. You don’t need much, maybe a teaspoon per egg used.[/li][li]Add a little Almond extract. Trust me. [/li][li]Put Real Butter on the skillet when you fry it. No margarine. Butter. [del]Again, j[/del] Just a half of pat per side.[/ol][/li]Good Luck.
Use white bread, sliced thick, if possible. Make sure it’s really soaked and then don’t fry it too hot. You want it to be cooked inside before it starts to get brown. A little vanilla in the egg mixture is nice, too.
Just off the top of my head I’m going to suggest you separate the egg yolks from the whites and just use the yolks in your milk mixture. I hope it helps. Now you’te making me hungry…
What exactly is the problem you’re having? Is the texture wrong? the carmelization of fats inconsistent? Taste?
What I do is I use slightly stale bread. But not the pre-cut kind, a whole, uncut loaf, so I can cut my own slices nice and thick. Mix the eggs, light cream (in roughly equal parts) and spices (I use a bit of cinnamon, vanilla extract, and a dash of nutmeg). Mix it well, there should be no lumps of egg floating around.
Dip the bread quickly, and set it aside for a little bit, giving the liquid time to absorb evenly inside the bread. Then cook at medium low heat, giving the butter time to slowly carmelize the bread. Remove unto a plate with paper towels.
As Maus Magill mentioned, use butter. Don’t ever cook with margarine (yuck!).
Let the bread sit in the egg or egg-and-milk concoction overnight in the fridge. In the morning you will discover that the bread has sucked up all the liquid and is now soft and soggy. Lift it carefully into the frying pan and fry; it’ll puff up prettily like a bread slice souffle. The texture of the resulting French toast is pleasantly bread pudding-like. I prefer this to the “puddle of fried eggs with a slice of bread stuck in it” technique.
Note: I always use eggs only, and don’t know how this will work if part of your liquid is milk.
I’m not as down on the oleo as some here. Use what you have. Sure real butter, straight from the farm ,is best but margarine is just fine IMO.
Beat together 1 egg for each 1/2 cup of milk - this is a basic custard mixture. Soak slices of bread (old, stale bread is better) in the mixture until they are well soaked. Some like it soggy, some like it light but it doesn’t really matter how long you soak as long as the bread still holds together.
Cook it on a griddle, medium high heat, in a little butter or equivalent, until golden brown. If you get too much egg you can get little omelet like bits around the edges. If these are too eggy then you need more milk in the batter or you need to drain the slices a little before cooking.
If you can cut your own bread, make it a little thick and let it “stale” for an hour or two.
About as much milk as egg per slice. I use a bit of honey and some vanilla, the almond extract is also good. That’s about a tsp. for the whole batch.
Let the bread absorb the mix, overnight in the fridge works. Handle carefully going to skillet or baking sheet. Why yes, you can use the oven.
French toast should be custardy. If it has a mushy centre you’re cooking it too fast. Low heat, a goodly bit of butter and some patience.
Specifically it doesn’t taste anything like French Toast… More often than not, like mentioned in the OP- it tastes more like a piece of bread surrounded by cooked egg.
Reading this thread I think I’m doing two things, specifically, wrong.
A> I don’t know if I’m letting to mixture soak enough into the bread, as much as i’m just coating the bread.
I don’t go the sweet route with sugar and cinnamon and/or vanilla. I prefer savory, so I whisk together the eggs and the milk and add salt and onion(mushed though a garlic press) and fresh chives sometimes. I also use whatever bread I have around, though letting it sit out a bit beforehand does seem to help it hold together better. Medium to medium high heat until golden.
You may be using too high heat, but I suspect that isn’t what is causing them to not taste like French Toast. Your pan would need to be jet rocket hot for it to cook the egg before it started to cook the bread too. It sounds to me like you are having two problems, both of which can be made worse by heat but neither of which is caused by too much heat.
You need sugar. How much is up to you. If not sugar some other seasoning for the batter. I like sugar and nutmeg personally, but that’s me. You can use anything. But that’s what it sounds like you are missing to me, seasoning. This sound like the solution to your “it tastes like eggs” problem. You might not be using enough milk either. Hard to say. Do you use a recipie or just eyeball?
You need to soak the bread long enough that it absorbs some of the batter. It doesn’t need to soak all the way through (though that’s how I do it) but the batter has to get inside the bread. I think this is your “eggs on the outside bread on the inside” problem.
The type of bread you use will determine how easily this happens. Dense whole wheat bread does not make for good French toast, 2 day old french baguettes sliced thick do. Sourdough doesn’t have enough structre to hold the batter well, Challa does. You get the idea. You want something that is fluffy and just a tiny bit stale.
THEN you want to make sure you are cooking on medium heat, because if they are cooked too high they will burn while the center is still soggy, and thats gross.
Yes, let the bread soak longer, in a flat container like a pie pan so that the bread can stay flat and not get an egg puddle in the middle. Let the excess drip off before cooking.
Also make sure you’re using enough milk. The ½ cup milk per egg mentioned by shiftless is a good guideline. What I do is beat the eggs, sugar (Splenda in my case), cinnamon, vanilla, and rum extract together then mix all that stuff into the milk.
I use King’s Hawaiian sweet bread - comes in a round loaf, not unlike Portuguese sweet bread. But unlike the denser Portuguese bread, with it’s anise-y flavor, King’s bread has a nice delicate flavor, and a very soft crumb, so you don’t have to soak it too long to get a good coating. I don’t use sugar in the batter, just eggs, some lowfat milk (about 1/3 by volume compared to eggs), cinnamon, andreally good Tahitian vanilla extract, thoroughly mixed to a froth.
Cut the bread into slices just a bit over 1" thick, quickly dip them in the batter, then cook at medium heat (preheated!) at first, adjusting the temperature as needed - you don’t want to cook it very quickly (which I’m guessing is what’s causing the “bread with fried egg around it” syndrome), but you don’t want to cook it so slowly that the custardy goodness inside turns rubbery. Basically, you want it to sizzle when you put the bread in the pan, but not to brown too quickly.
Oh, and the first couple slices are always throwaways, as they help you find the right heat level - if you’re only making a couple slices at a time, you’re only getting the beta-test versions. That’s why I make a whole boatload and feed the earlier slices to the kids. Hey, they don’t care!
Oh, and when you’re all done cooking them, use real, Grade B dark amber maple syrup, and a dollop of sour cream. If I find you’ve used imitation maple syrup anywhere near my french toast recipe, I will find you - and steal your french toast.
Hey, they don’t care!