The lost art of lost bread
French toast, or pain perdu originated as a way to salvage bread that would otherwise be too old to use. Today, some wily restaurants actually make bread specifically for it, and others use a multitude of strange choices to make it more interesting. The thing is, it’s already a brilliant ploy and a wonderful meal, without any assistance from outlandish creations. This morning, I made what is perhaps the best pain perdu I have ever tasted.
It all started with a loaf of wonderful of pain au levain from a bakery down the street on Friday. Since I woke up at 6:30am this morning (don’t ask), I cut some lovely 3/4” slices and set them out to dry some more. For me, the goal of pain perdu is a creamy, almost custardy interior, but with the sturdy structure of a good bread. This requires that the bread dry a little—“go stale” in other words—so that it can absorb the custard without losing its integrity.
After a couple hours sitting out, I made a quick custard mixture with a few eggs, whole milk1 and some almond extract. Standing in for the usual fresh nutmeg was a little bit of malted milk powder, which brings a slightly different flavor to the mixture. I let the bread soak a few minutes on each side before it hit a warm non-stick griddle.
The secret, if there is one, of good French toast is that it can not be rushed when it is cooked. If you cook it at too high a heat, you end up making scrambled eggs inside the toast. Heck, I don’t even like my scrambled eggs cooked as fast as most do. Instead, you must let it cook over low heat so that the custard has time to set, and only then you can raise the temperature a bit, perhaps to medium, to finish and set the exterior. This could be done in the oven, I suppose, but I’m simply lazy and do it on the griddle.
Once done, I decided to try out some new, and shockingly good, apricot preserves. Made with Blenheim apricots, it puts anything you’ve ever thought you knew about apricot preserves to shame. So, forsaking my normal grade B maple syrup, I plopped a healthy dollop of the preserves on the newly finished creations.
In a word: perfection.
1 Really, what’s the point of tinted water?
This entry was posted at 10:16 am on 14 October 2007 and is filed under food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
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Yum! Sounds wonderful. A very enjoyable and edifying treatise on the custardy interior. But now my stomach is growling…
I like to experiment with french toast too. I’ve never thought to try almond extract, so thanks for the tip. Usually I work with vanilla extract, cinnamon and
a bit of sugar in the mix, not being a big fan of nutmeg. Another thing I do is deep fry with the crust trimmed off.
Your guidance on soak time and slow cooking is something I’ll keep in mind. I never knew it was called pain perdu. Thanks!