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For these recipes, I use a variety bread: sourdough French, sour whole wheat, etc. I buy round loaves of these that are sliced slightly thicker than sandwich bread; except near the heel, the slices are much longer and wider than sandwich bread. Generally, rye or pumpernickel does not work well.
Most of us think of French toast as a sweet breakfast, with syrup or honey. This one is not sweet at all. Instead, it's savory.
The following is for two servings, which are quite enough for breakfast for my wife and me. I always make mine with cheese, generally cheddar, gouda, or Ementhaller.
2 eggs
2 large slices of bread
water
onion
olive oil
(optional) cheese
non-stick frying pan
Break eggs into a very wide, shallow bowl. Use half an egg shell as a measure to add 1/2 shell of water. Beat thoroughly.
Place the bread into the bowl. Turn the bread over. Let it soak.
Take two slices of onion, each about 1/4 inch thick. With a sharp knife, mince the onion.
Sauté the onion in a small amount olive oil over a medium fire until the onion begins to color. Use a spatula or fork to corral the onion into two areas of the pan.
Place the bread directly over the onion. Pour any remaining egg over the bread. Cook about 1 minute over a high fire. Turn. (Optionally add a slice of your favorite cheese on top, and cover the pan.) Cook another 1 minute.
Serve. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Here, the French toast resembles the classical sweet breakfast. Again, the following is for two servings.
2 eggs
2 large slices of bread
water
honey
cinnamon
olive oil
(optional) cheese
non-stick frying pan
Break eggs into a very wide, shallow bowl. Use half an egg shell as a measure to add 1/2 shell of water. Add about 2-3 TBS of honey and about 1 tsp cinnamon. (Adjust the amounts of honey and cinnamon to taste.) Beat thoroughly.
Place the bread into the bowl. Turn the bread over. Let it soak.
Pour enough olive oil into the frying pan to coat the bottom. Heat the frying pan over a high flame. Add the bread and cook for about 1 minute. Turn the bread over and cook the other side for another 1 minute. (Optionally add a slice of your favorite cheese on top, and cover the pan.)
With this recipe, no syrup is needed.
If bacon is also served, I leave it on the side and not on top under the cheese.
The mixing bowl should be wide enough that the two slices of bread can both sit in the egg mixture side by side. I use a wire whip — sometimes called a "whisk" or "balloon whip" — to beat the egg mixture.
I put cheese on my piece of French toast but not on my wife's. To me, cheese goes quite well even with the sweet recipe. Without the cheese, the pan does not need to be covered.
With both egg and cheese, this has a lot of cholesterol. The olive oil tends to reduce the effects of dietary cholesterol.
This is adapted from a recipe I found while reading online amateur fiction. In one chapter of the story, the characters had a breakfast of French toast casserole. The mention had a footnote to the bottom of the page, where there was a link to the recipe.
2 large thick slices of bread
½ a cube of butter
½ cup (packed) + 1 Tbs brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon
olive oil
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Grease the bottom and sides of a 12 inch x 12 inch baking pan with olive oil.
Melt the butter in a small sauce pan. When it is melted, add the ½ cup of brown sugar. Over a very low flame, stir until the sugar is dissolved in the melted butter. When the mixture stops bubbling, pour it into the baking pan, spreading it across the entire bottom of the pan
Cut the bread into ½-inch cubes.
Break the eggs into a medium mixing bowl, and beat them with a wire whisk. Add the milk, vanilla, and 1 tsp cinnamon. Thoroughly combine these with the whisk.
Add the bread cubes to the baking pan, spreading them evenly. Pour the egg mixture over the cubes, wetting all of the cubes. If some cubes do not appear wet, press them down into the egg mixture.
Top the bread cubes with the 1 Tbs of brown sugar and the remaining 1 tsp of cinnamon, sprinkling both to cover the entire top of the casserole.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top begins to brown.
This should serve two. There might be leftovers, which can be reheated another day for breakfast.
My wife is lactose intolerant, so I used Lactaid® milk. With the cinnamon and vanilla, we could not tell the difference.
The original recipe called for about 20% of a loaf of French bread. I used a thickly sliced round loaf of sour dough cracked wheat bread (as indicated in the introduction to this Web page), taking two large slices from the middle of the loaf. I cubed the bread before making the egg mixture to allow the bread to slightly dry. The recipe suggested cubing the bread the night before assembling the casserole to ensure that the cubes are dry. I do not think that is necessary.
Once, there were no large slices of bread in the loaf. Instead, I used three smaller slices. The result was still very good.
The original recipe called for greasing the baking pan with butter. Instead, I used olive oil, which did not impair the taste. On my first attempt to make this, I lined the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, which I also greased with olive oil. That did not make turning the casserole out of the pan very successful. I now serve this at the table from an unlined baking pan, which might require some scraping with a metal spatula.
Updated 15 September 2024
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