Eggs & Bread: Beginner to 3 Michelin Star Breakfast

Eggs on toast. A humble staple enjoyed worldwide from cozy home kitchens to the trendiest brunch spots. I'm taking this classic dish through three levels of culinary mastery. Beginner, intermediate and advanced. A technique refined in a three mission style kitchen. First up, here's our simple technique you can use to elevate your breakfast game at home. Level one, folded eggs. So the origin of this is a bit unknown but I'm going to go with saying that it's from Australia just because it sounds cool. But it's basically effectively scrambled eggs but just sort of folded into a nice rose shape. So the process is going to be very simple to that making scrambled egg. We are going to season our eggs prior to cooking because the seasoning as we discovered helps to keep the egg more tender during cooking. I'm also using a spoon to mix my egg which is controversial but I find the spoon incorporates less air into the egg. So it's going to whisk my eggs nicely making sure that all the white and the yolk is fully incorporated. If we don't whisk it enough you can have like a patchy looking finish on your eggs. Okay so there we go, fully mixed. I'm just putting a touch of butter, a tiny bit of oil just for flavour. Got some nice toasted sourdough on our plate. Pan on a medium high heat. Turn it up slightly until the butter is nicely foaming. My pan's getting hot. Now I'm going to go in with my eggs. So we're going to go up, let the raw egg pour down. We're going to go left and again let that egg set. Then we're going to go top to bottom and the same and then left to right before turning around. Once you've folded then just turn the pan off. Let it sit in the pan just to finish cooking slightly. Season with a little bit of salt at the end, a few twists of pepper and then we're going to slide it out onto our toast. Okay so this is our beginner egg folded eggs. So this is level two egg in a hole fondant toast. So we've got a nice brioche loaf here so we're going to remove the end and cut ourselves a nice thick bit of brioche. So I've sliced my bread about, I'd say about three quarters of an inch thick. Crust soft just for presentation. Nice little ring cutter, just make a little incision while cutting the centre out. Throw that to the dogs. So pan on with a little bit of oil, a little bit of butter and we're going to put our brioche carcass as I like to call them into our pan and just lightly start to toast that one side and then we're going to get a nice deep golden caramelisation on that brioche. Once my bread is toasted I'm just going to flip it over and turn the heat off just to let the pan cool down ever so slightly before cracking my egg into the centre like so. Back onto the heat on a low heat, tiny bit more butter like so before covering with a lid. So we'll just roast the bacon 75% of the way, sprinkled with a little bit of brown sugar and just give it an extra couple of minutes after that. A little bit of chervil for garnish. So it's been in the pan now for about two minutes. I'm just going to turn the heat up ever so slightly, looking for a nice brown colour all around. The egg white is setting from underneath and we're just going to look to flip this in about a minute to 30 seconds. Just going to flip it over and we're going to give it a few seconds on the other side just to set. Okay then we're just going to garnish with a little bit of bacon and a few sprigs of chervil. There we have it, fondant egg. Okay level three for our advanced egg. We have a lovely little dish from France from Chef Alain Passard from his restaurant La Peuge. This dish is a chauffoir d'oeuf with brioche batons. This is his take on a classic French egg dish, an egg yolk which is topped with a spiced cream served with brioche batons. Very simple but very elegant and light. So first of all we're going to make some lovely brioche batons. So I'm just going to take a nice slice of brioche, remove the crusts as this is a three mission star dish after all. Set those aside to caramelise later. We've got a pan of water which we're just going to bring to a simmer. We're going to take an egg topper, give it a little shake to centralise the yolk. You can buy these online from anywhere. Fat end at the bottom, hold the egg, hold the topper, lift up the top and then just drop it down like so. Before taking the egg out of the shell, so you should have a nice scored line around the top of the egg. Remove the top like so and pour out the egg white out of the shell, relieving the yolk. Or in other ways you can pour out the whole thing and then scoop the egg yolk out like I just did. Egg yolk gently out like so, place the egg yolk back into the shell like so. We've got some double cream here. I'm going to season it with a bit of salt, few dashes of vinegar, some white pepper, ginger, tiny bit of clove and then some nutmeg. Before we whisk all of this together to form soft peaks. Soft peaks just means that it's just holding together but it's not too grainy. So the addition of the vinegar and the salt will make your cream come together much faster. So you want to make sure you add this at the start, not at the end. So like so, put our cream to the side, ready to finish. Take the water off the heat, place a pan on the heat for my brioche and then we're just going to lower our egg into that shimmering water and let it float and warm through for two minutes. So Chef Alan's restaurant Arpeggio is still to this day three Michelin star rated restaurant. He actually won two stars at the age of 26, which was extremely difficult to do. Into the pan, going to add a touch of butter before going in with my brioche fingers and we're just going to lightly toast these all around on each side. For garnish we're going to have some lovely chopped chives here because no French video would be complete without a few lovely chopped chives. Timer's gone off for our egg yolks, we're just going to remove this from the heat and then we're just going to give our egg a little clean. So our egg should be just warm but still runny. So pan's going off on our brioche fingers and we are almost ready for service. So we traditionally this egg would be served as it is, we've added the brioche batons to this dish to give a little nod to sort of British culture and dippy eggs and soldiers. We're going to season the inside with a little bit of flaky salt, a couple of twists of black pepper before going on with a few chives and then we have a tiny bit of maple syrup to glaze the top of the egg for final little sprinkling of chives and salt. I'm having my folded eggs with fallow sriracha, available online. I never have my eggs without sriracha, it's an absolute favourite. So let's give it a go. It's simple, it's delicious, I mean there's not much more you really want. I would always have eggs either like this or scrambled. There's not a massive amount of difference just apart from like the strands of egg are a bit more together, it's almost it's basically like eating more of an omelette rather than a scrambled egg. A very good safe method. Level two, egg in a hole. So here we go. It's actually deceptively delicious, it's almost like a poached egg in texture in the centre with the buttery crispy brioche on the outside. It's actually really delicious for a special occasion, birthday etc etc. I definitely suggest you give it a go. Level three, Michelin level egg. Chauffoir d'oeuf with brioche battens à la Alain Passard. This is the first time I'm trying this myself so that's interesting. So it's like creamy obviously from the egg yolk and the cream. Never had double cream in a savoury setting but it comes through, it's different, it's just like it's luxurious but also refined in its flavour. A nice bit of raw Allium flavour from the chive and that may come through the most out of all the spices. The one ingredient that I thought I wasn't going to like is actually the one I like the most which is the maple syrup. That little bit of sweetness along with the spice kind of is really really interesting. Very decadent, very rich, something for you to try a skill set if you can't see it. If I had to pick a winner, my personal favourite would be egg in a hole. Some of you who've been following the channel for a while might have noticed my commitment to this challenge. Chef Will says that I look like an egg recently so I thought I'd go all in and bring you a lovely egg video.