For our first French toast video, we bring you a popular You Tube video from Chef John at foodwishes.com. He shows us how to make french toast restaurant-style with a secret that not many people know. Check out the video and transcript below.
Transcript:
Hi this is Chef John from Food Wishes dot com and today we’re doing….French toast? That’s right, French toast. Why? Because people don’t make it right. They don’t make it like the restaurant. I’m going to show you the secret here.
We’re not just going to dip bread in beaten egg and fry it. See, that’s what most people think French toast is. We’re making a batter first, sort of a custard. We’ve got two eggs, half a cup of milk, all the ingredients are below in the post obviously. So, some milk, some eggs, we’re going to put some vanilla, a teaspoon or maybe a half a teaspoon, to taste. A little salt, surprised? A quarter teaspoon of salt. A little shake of cinnamon and a little shake of allspice. Now, if you want to put some different flavorings, you know what you like.
You want to beat that together, so basically have a simple egg milk batter/custard. What we’re gonna do is slice our bread and soak it in that custard and then you’re going to see what happens.
Now I’m using a beautiful wheat whole grain french bread here. I figure if I’m going to fry this in butter and top it with maple syrup I better use whole grain. We’re gonna take six inch-thick slices and we’re going to put it in that egg and milk mixture. And you’re not going to believe this, but it’s going to soak up all that egg milk mixture (which is longer to say than batter so I’m going to call it batter).
The secret is to get 100% total saturation. Those are like sponges. By the way that’s day-old bread, always a good idea. Fresh bread just won’t soak up as much batter [Note: The history of French toast tells us that it was developed as a way to make use of stale bread]. So believe it or not, you can let that sit and soak up all that stuff.
Preheat your oven to 400. Why? Just do it. You’ll see.
In a pan with a couple tablespoons of butter, we’re going to brown these very lightly to a golden brown. Because these are going to go into the oven to finish. That is the real secret. So what we’re doing here is we’re just giving it some color. Ooo, look at that. Man that sounds good.
So we’re just going to saute that for maybe three minutes on each side. Just to kind of seal it. Flip them over. Do the same thing to the other side. Now when those are beautiful and golden, you’re going to transfer those to a baking sheet. Technically that’s a half sheet pan. We’re going to throw them in our over for 12-15 minutes. Now what’s going to happen is that egg custard/batter/egg milk mixture is going to actually suffle, the egg is going to puff up. It’s going to be beautiful and just soft and just moist and delicious inside. The outside is crisp. The inside is just so incredibly creamy and delicious. You’ve never had French toast like this if you’ve just been frying it. I continue the visual torture here with drizzling slowly maple syrup. By the way, restaurants, can you stop putting powdered sugar on my French toast? I don’t need powdered sugar. They’re not donuts.
Anyway, that’s French toast. I hope you give that a try. The secret is the custard, let the bread soak a little while, make sure it’s 100% saturated, and then fry it, bake it, you’re gonna love it.
Go to the site if you’re not already there, read the post, and most of all enjoy it!
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 – 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- pinch of cinnamon
- pinch of allspice
- 6 slices of whole grain wheat bread (day old)
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