This is a Basic French Toast recipe, but with an added secret ingredient to give it a deeper flavor. Just five simple ingredients that whisk up in minutes for a solid and delicious morning breakfast.
I am a breakfast lover. I love almost every breakfast food offered on the menu at any local café. But hands down my all time favorite breakfast is Basic French Toast.
Perhaps it is the simplicity of taking a mere slice of bread and turning into something delectable. Or that the eggs and bread make for a solid stand-alone meal.
Whatever the magic is, there is just something wholesome and delicious about a plate of French Toast.
Real Life Side Note: When taking pictures for this week’s post, I discovered that by the time my husband and kids had smothered their French Toast in delicious maple syrup, there was none left when it made it’s way to my end of the table. And a rule (or rather goal of mine) at our house is we do one jar of maple syrup, then two jars of homemade fruit syrup or preserve, before opening up a new jar of maple syrup. Just one of the ways our family tries to keep in budget.
As it was, we ran out of maple syrup before I was able to snap some pictures for this week’s post, so what you see coating this stack of toast is homemade peach preserve. Maple syrup is pretty hard to beat as a topping, but this peach preserve…yum! It’s definitely up there.
Not a Recipe
Though I have this breakfast classic listed as a recipe on my website, I must admit that it’s not much of a recipe.
No need for measuring spoons or measuring cups. No quantitative ingredients.
Instead, this Basic French Toast is all about getting a feel for how you like your breakfast – more on that later.
Milk, eggs, cinnamon, bread slices, … and black pepper (yep! That’s right, black pepper) are all you need to griddle up this delicious breakfast. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it is oh-so yummy!
Milk – I like to make my Basic French Toast using staple whole milk bought from the grocery store. Some recipes call for condensed milk or cream, but this basic breakfast is just that – it’s basic. And basic recipes call for basic ingredients. So open your fridge and grab out whatever type of milk you have sitting on the shelf!
Eggs – brown eggs, white eggs, large size or medium. Just grab out some egg and whisk ‘em up.
Cinnamon – Growing up, we always included cinnamon in our French Toast mixture. The cinnamon adds that extra sweet flavor, not to mention this is just another great time to add cinnamon into your diet.
Secret Ingredient: Black Pepper – I know, I know. Ya’ll are probably thinking I am crazy for adding black pepper to my French Toast. French toast is a breakfast on the sweeter side, and pepper seems like it belongs in the opposite direction – but trust me when I say the pepper adds to the flavor. All you need is a little pinch of pepper to gives this breakfast so much more depth. It’s worth adding, I promise.
(Optional) Vanilla – In almost every “bready” or flour-based breakfast, I always like to offer the addition of vanilla to add a touch of sweetness that helps to elevate the dish. At our house, we add vanilla to our French Toast about 50% of the time.
Bread – the main ingredient in any French Toast. At our house, we’re not picky. We’ve made French Toast out of whole wheat sandwich bread, classic white French loaf, sourdough, even leftover hamburger buns. And they all taste great!
In these pictures, we’re using our Whole Wheat Sourdough Sandwich Bread.
Getting A Feel / Making Your Toast
Making French Toast really is as easy as making a simple mixture of milk and eggs, dashed with cinnamon and black pepper and maybe a drizzle of vanilla. Then you simply want to dip your bread in enough of the egg mixture to barely soak into the bread before cooking it on the stovetop. Top with butter and syrup and serve.
As I said earlier in this post, making French Toast is much more about getting a feel for how you like your bread rather than a strict recipe of portioned out ingredients.
That said, cooking French Toast can be broken down into a handful of easy steps:
- Making the Egg Mixture
Your Egg Mixture includes the eggs, milk, vanilla (if choosing to add it), cinnamon, and pinch of black pepper.
Your Egg Mixture includes the eggs, milk, vanilla (if choosing to add it), cinnamon, and pinch of black pepper.
As for quantities, our family of five (2 adults and 3 kids) will generally eat about 8-10 slices of toast for breakfast.
For portioning out your eggs and milk, I always figure 2 slices of toast per egg. And about an egg’s worth of milk for every two eggs.
Now before you get all excited thinking that is too complicated, just think of it like this:
You want your finished Egg Mixture to be about 1/3 milk and 2/3 eggs.
So if we want to eat 8 slices of French Toast for breakfast, I usually add 4 eggs to my bowl (or pie pan, as I often use) and about ½ cup of milk.
For four slices of toast, 2 eggs and ¼ cup of milk should do it.
Remember, it’s all about feel, so there’s really no getting it wrong!
Once you’ve added your eggs and milk, then add in your cinnamon, vanilla, and pepper.
And whisk until filly blended. (I usually whisk my eggs and milk with a simple kitchen fork. A whisk would certainly work, and if you’ve read some of my other breakfast articles, you know I love the Pampered Chef mini sauce whisk. But a fork works just as well.)
2. Slice Your Bread
As we pointed out before, any type of bread can work to make this Basic French Toast. But in choosing your bread and mixing your eggs and milk, remember that not all loaves of bread are created equal.
Some breads are more airy, others more dense, some are naturally moist while others more dry.
This difference in bread textures as well as flavor will influence how much milk and how many eggs you choose to add to your soaking mix. And depending on the flavor of bread, you might choose to add a heavy splash of vanilla and a large dash of cinnamon, or you might opt to limit one or both to better coordinate with your desired end result.
Over the years, I have learned that when I am cooking with a denser, more elastic loaf like sandwich bread, I want to add a little more milk to my mixture. I also like to let my bread set in the egg mixture a few seconds longer than I would, say, a fluffy French loaf.
This takes me to the next step:
3. Soaking Your Bread
The added mix and increased soak time help to moisten a dryer or denser loaf.
Now that our eggs, milk, and seasonings are mixed and our bread is sliced, it is now to to soak the bread into the egg mixture before taking it to our hot and ready frying pan.
For most breads, you really only want to dip both sides into the bread. Most breads should only “soak” about a second or two per side before going onto the frying pan. Soaking for too long will just result in an ultra soggy slice of bread that will likely fall apart before it makes it onto the pan.
The thickness and texture of the bread will also help determine how much milk you’ll want to include when mixing up your Egg Mixture.
Because sandwich bread is denser than a French bread loaf, the sandwich bread will use up more of my Egg Mixture more quickly. To compensate for this, I might simply choose to an added splash of milk to help my Egg Mixture go further.
4. Cook
I like to cook my French Toast in a hot cast iron pan set at medium, or medium-low, heat.
Butter is my main choice of “grease” when cooking any breakfast, but greasing your pan with any nut, seed, or fruit oils can work as well.
Serving Hot while Eating Together
Like pancakes, French Toast is meant to be served hot off the griddle. Afterall, no one likes to eat a cold pancake nor a cold piece of egg-soaked toast!
BUT, eating these single-serving breakfasts as they come off the stove makes for really broken breakfast in my book.
“Food tastes better when you eat it with your family.”
I prefer my family to eat together. Sitting down at the table together as a family and eating our meal as a family are distinct parts of a meal that I value highly – and I’m sure many of you do as well.
But eating pancakes one at a time as they come off the stove results in a strung-out, straggly meal with every member of my family eating at different times. By the time person four finally sits down at the table to begin eating their breakfast, person two is ready for seconds and person one is done with their breakfast.
And squeezing in breakfast prayer amidst the jumble of pancake distribution becomes a stressful pause amidst a flurry of chaos, rather than a meaningful moment that connects heaven with our dining room table.
For all things individually cooked – pancakes, crepes, waffles, toasts, and even sunny-side-up eggs – I like to keep them heated on a low heat setting in the oven in a metal or glass pan, adding to the pan as more cook. Keeping them at a low heat keeps them warm without over burning.
You also want to make sure it is the bake setting not a broil setting. Broil will dry out and easily burn your delicious breakfast. Whereas a low bake setting will simply keep them warm and ready serve hot.
I keep cooking and adding more to my pan or tin until I have enough to feed my crew of hungry people. Then it’s “breakfast is ready for everyone”.
The prayer is said, the syrup is poured, and we can all dig in.
