The Best French Toast You'll Ever Eat

Most French toast is sad and soggy, but this one tastes like creme brulee, looks like dessert, and makes breakfast more fun than you ever thought possible. Great French toast will all start with a nice foundation, and that all comes down to the bread that you choose. Some people like challah, some people like milk bread. I prefer brioche. I'm gonna start by trimming off the ends of my bread. I don't think I have as much dislike for the end pieces as most people, but in this case, they're not very helpful to us. You can give them to your dog or something. And then I'm gonna whip out the ruler, and I know, it doesn't make that much sense to be pulling out a ruler when you're making breakfast, but when it comes to making French toast, precision is actually very important. It's very easy for French toast to get way too soggy and way too floppy. So what I'll do is lay my loaf on the side and then measure out 1 1⁄4 inch slices. This way, if every single slice is the same width, our timing while making this recipe can be perfect. Given you know I'm not normally one for measuring, it does feel a little weird to be pulling out a ruler, but if you're gonna spend this much time and effort and care to make this beautiful French toast, you might as well make it right the first time. And also, look at how perfect these slices are. Doesn't that make you happy? Gets a little hard to measure once you get down to the edge here. Okay, here we go, last slice. The next step here is to dry our bread, and this step is very, very important. I'll tell you why. When making French toast, drying out this bread keeps it from getting soft and mushy. You gotta think of this bread like a sponge. Too soft, and it collapses, but too hard, it's not gonna absorb enough of that delicious, flavorful custard. So this is gonna go straight into the oven While our brioche is drying out in the oven, let's move on to make our custard. I'll start by adding some milk to a small pot, and then I'll turn my heat to low, and then we're gonna make what's called an infusion by adding in a little bit of star anise, a few cardamom pods, one cinnamon stick, a couple cloves, a little vanilla bean paste. This is a lot easier and more practical than using actual vanilla beans. A little bit of orange zest. Grating in that zest will give us all those essential oils from the orange, which gives tons and tons of flavor. And last but not least, a little pinch of salt. Once I've brought in all my aromatics, I'll bring my heat up to medium, medium low, and start to whisk. What this step here is doing is letting all those aromatics bloom. This is gonna give us so much more flavor than we would've gotten if we just did it cold. So to me, this added step here is really important, especially when we have a bit of time since that bread is drying out in the oven. This is a simple, but also really advanced technique that I wish I learned when I was a kid making fresh toast all the time. We'll know our infusion is done once the milk starts to gently bubble right at the edges, or if an instant-read thermometer reaches 190 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point we wanna toss on a lid and set this aside to infuse. By now, our bread should be ready for its first flip. I can already tell by looking at my bread that it's got that light golden brown color and it's starting to dry out, but if you listen, another way to tell is if I press this part down, it's not gonna have any give, whereas on the other side, it's gonna still be quite soft and fluffy. So I'll flip all of these over and then back, and it goes for another 10 minutes while we complete some of the rest of our steps. While the other side of our bread is drying out, we're gonna make something now that's called a sabayon, and don't let that name freak you out. Really, all it is is the other half of our custard, which is gonna combine with that milk to make an incredible kind of batter for our bread. To begin, I'm gonna separate out six egg yolks. I used to separate them in the shells. Now, I don't know, for whatever reason, I like separating them with my hands because I feel like you can get off even more of the egg white. Oh no. If you mess up like that, it's okay. Just use that for scrambled eggs later. But while I separate these, you may be wondering why exactly do we even need to separate them at all? Why can't we just use the entire egg? And the reason is simple. We actually don't want that custard that we're making to have the consistency and the taste of scrambled eggs. And if we use whole eggs, that's exactly what's gonna happen. Instead, the inside of our French toast should be luxurious and creamy and silky, and egg yolks are one of the things that allow you to do that in baking. If you ever have a cream-filled donut or a similar pastry, there's probably not any egg white in there, but there are definitely egg yolks. Once I got my six egg yolks, I'm gonna add in some sugar and then start to whisk. The goal here is to get it almost light and fluffy, at least much lighter in color than it is right now. So when you start out this process, make sure you look carefully at the color and consistency before, because that'll help you to know when it's done. If you're whisking the way that I am right now without stopping, it'll probably take you somewhere around three minutes and your arms are going to get tired. So this is a really good opportunity to switch back and forth and practice being ambidextrous in the kitchen. You can already see that it's getting lighter and foamier. It almost looks now more like the silky consistency of a pancake batter and not so much egg yolks. And that's exactly what we're going for. Another way to know that your egg yolk mixture is done is if you lift some of this up and draw some shapes on the top. And if it sits there on the top for a few seconds before melting back into that batter, it's a pretty good sign that you're done. And the great thing is, by now your bread should be ready to take out of the oven. Let's see how we're looking. There's another reason that we dry this out in our oven instead of sitting it on our kitchen counter for a couple of days. And that's that the outside is hard and crispy. It's got a nice shell to it. But the inside, if I go like this, I can feel that it's soft and fluffy. What that's going to do is keep the French toast in a nice structure where it'll hold on the outsides, but the inside there will turn into this beautiful egg yolk custard. And that's how we get perfect French toast. For now, I'm going to sit this off to the side and then grab my milk mixture so that we can finish up our custard. Now that all this has been infused, I'm going to fish these all out. Remember how much you put in there. You do not want to be that person that makes everybody French toast and leaves a whole clove in there, which right now I think there is one clove left. Oh, there it is, found it. Remember how much you put in there because I've done this before. I've left something in there. Somebody chomps down on it. All of a sudden it goes from a happy weekend morning to everybody being mad at you. So be careful. Now watch carefully on this next step because what we're doing now is called tempering. This liquid here is still really, really hot. And here we have eggs. So if we don't do this right, we're going to make scrambled eggs. And that's not what anybody wants right now. Before I do it, a little side trick for you. If you're trying to do two things at once and this bowl or something won't stay still, grab a towel like this, then wet it and throw it under that bowl. And you should be able to build yourself a nice setup where it's not going to move around anymore. I'm going to slowly start pouring in that milk while I whisk. And the reason it's called tempering is because by doing this slowly, I'm going to gradually bring up the temperature of this mixture here without cooking or overcooking what's inside. If you've ever made hollandaise sauce before, you've basically done exactly what you're seeing right now. We're doing everything we can to make sure we don't scramble our eggs. Before I dip my French toast, I'm going to get my griddle up to temp. This thing right here is the exact same griddle that I used making pancakes growing up. And what I loved about it so much is if I had any little burnt pieces or any extra oil, I could push it off to the sides. And then this part up here let me cook everything without worrying about messing anything up. The reason I'm doing this now is because you want to make sure that the heat can evenly distribute across the whole thing before we actually start cooking. So let's jump back over here now. You've got to set up a dipping station. Always set up your station in the order of what you're going to be doing things. So here's my dry bread, here's my custard. And then here is where I'll put my finished dipped French toast. I know I already used a ruler. Now I'm going to use a timer. We've gotten this far. We're not going to ruin it now. This part's very simple. Take your dry brioche, drop it into the custard and start your timer. We'll let it soak for 30 seconds per side. No more, no less. I'm watching carefully for when this hits 30. I'll be ready. Here we go. And now we flip. No more, no less. See how it's built up this beautiful, silky custardy layer on the top already? What's happening now is that's going to gradually soak in leading up to when we cook. But we've created this recipe so that by the time the French toast is all finished, it's got that perfect consistency throughout the entire thing. Okay, there's 30 seconds on the other side. Now I take it off. Let that drip off a little bit. And then we'll sit it down. Look at how good that looks. That's awesome. Same thing again. Go. Just let it soak. That eggy custardy mixture right now is crawling up a little bit through all those little holes and cracks in the bread. But we've dried it in a way where the outside is still going to remain firm enough that my French toast isn't all limp and falling all over the place, which is what happened when I made it every single time growing up. There's 30 seconds on both sides for this one. You'll notice, by the way, that when you pull these out, they're going to be noticeably heavier. And that's okay. That's exactly what we're looking for here. We certainly don't want it to be too heavy, but we want enough of that liquid in there that we're getting all that flavor. And also that's what's going to contribute to the incredible consistency that this French toast ends up getting when you finish cooking it. Okay, there's another one. Oh, wow. It's such a nice consistency. One more thing that's important to note. When I'm dropping it in, I'm not pushing it down. It's just floating on the top there. And what I want you to understand is that it's doing all the work by itself. We don't need to shove it down under the liquid. The recipe has been created so that you can just leave it there. It'll float and it'll soak to that perfect level. I don't know how to describe the smell to you. You just have to make it. It smells so good. Once you've dipped your last piece, lay it off to the side, then neaten up your workstation and get ready to cook. If you've followed all the steps so far, your French toast is going to go from good to great. And now we're going to take it from great to exceptional. The first step there, we're going to sprinkle a bit of sugar over each piece of our French toast right before we put it down into the griddle. If you've ever had creme brulee, you know that it has this beautiful layer of hard crack sugar over the top of it that you break into to get to the rest of the creme brulee. And I like to treat my French toast that exact same way. If it helps, you can think of your French toast like a creme brulee. On the outside, you're going to have this nice, hard, crispy shell. And on the inside, you're going to break through to this beautiful, custardy, soft, creamy interior. I'm going to go two at a time here so I can really focus on the cooking process. So once I've got a nice layer of sugar down on two of my pieces of brioche, I'm now going to grab some clarified butter and spread a generous amount onto my griddle. Two things here. One, I'm using this clarified butter so that it doesn't burn. And two, you'll notice my griddle isn't too hot. And that's because we have sugar, which can burn very quickly and easily. Sometimes this takes a little bit of trial and error, so don't get mad at me if I burn this first one. Here we go. Very light sizzle. That's actually what I'm looking for. Don't want to go over the top with a loud, aggressive sizzle right away. You just want to let that sugar grip the pan and gently caramelize. I don't want to slide that melted sugar all around on itself. Same thing with this other piece. I burned my pinky. That's okay. Just got to stay calm. It's all about the French toast right now. Now it's all about just controlling your heat, controlling that temperature. And now while we let it cook, we'll grab more sugar and coat the other side of our French toast. Try not to drop it all over your pan. That's going to also make everything burn. Try to keep it all in the actual French toast. But at the same time, make sure you get the edges. You want to make sure that those edges get some love too. The best tool right now is going to be your nose. Smell, smell, smell. Make sure nothing's burning. If you even smell a hint of burning, turn down the heat. Shift your whole pan off the heat. Right now, I don't smell anything and can be pretty confident that my French toast isn't burning right in front of my eyes. Going to add down a little more clarified butter. Turn up my heat a little bit as well, now that I've got good control of what's happening here. And then I can start to get some sizzles going around my French toast. Every single time you're cooking, whether you're using a different pan, a different burner, whatever it may be, get a new understanding of how that heat control works. It's always going to be a little bit different. So get that understanding, get that control before you really start cooking and maybe make a mistake. Things look good. I'm starting to get those bubbles around the edge of my French toast, which is great, but I can definitely kick things up a notch. See how I'm spinning, making sure different parts of the French toast are touching different parts of the pan so that we get even heat distribution. The other thing I have to sometimes remind myself is not to get too excited because the smell is amazing and maybe everyone's yelling at you to get breakfast finished up, but don't let yourself get too excited because that's when you can also really quickly and easily burn things. There's going to be this perfect sweet spot of heat control that you need to be really, really focused on and dialed in on, especially when it comes to caramelizing sugar directly on a pan like this. Right now I'm hovering between setting number four and five on my burner, but for you, it might be two and three, or it might be six and seven. It just depends. Give my French toast a little check again. Oh, see that? I can still keep going with that. I'm starting to get that caramelization, but I'm not there yet. So now I'm going to shift this one away a little bit. Make sure we're always keeping everything well oiled with that clarified butter. And I think I'm at a stage now where I might be ready to flip one of these. So I'm going to take this one, go right over and onto the other side. That is a beautiful piece of French toast. Now we're going to let the sugar do the same exact thing, caramelize on the other side. Once that cools down, we're going to get this really nice hard shell. It'll be the best consistency you've ever experienced on a French toast. I promise you that. Heat down a little bit. I'm seeing a little bit more smoke than I'd like and also getting the sense that I might need to flip this one. As you can see, a couple of spots there are kind of empty on the top of the French toast. And that's because I might've moved it around before the sugar fully caramelized and set. This is still a beautiful piece of French toast. If you're worried about burning it, you can always make this French toast without adding on that layer of sugar on the top. At this point in the process, I'm confident now that my sugar is actually stuck to that French toast. So now I can kind of flip them around, move them around freely. This is when you can really dial it in and get it to that perfect color that you're looking for. I'm really happy with these. I think we're ready to take them off the heat and let them hang out over here for just a moment. You can be generous with the sugar as you sprinkle these, but more importantly, just make sure you're covering every area. It's kind of like seasoning any food. And now that I've gotten such a great sense of the temperature control on my griddle here, these ones should be even easier. When I put it down, I'll put it right over a bunch of that clarified butter and give it a quick press, just like cooking a steak. Same thing in the middle, then just let it set. And I'm gonna be bold and try to do three at once this time. I think this one's ready to flip. Boom, look at that. That's a winner right there. All of that beautiful color that you see there is going to translate directly to great flavor. You can see how, based on where your burners are on your griddle, things are gonna cook at different rates wherever they may be. This one down here is barely just getting started. This one in the middle is done, so I'll pull this off. That's our best one so far. Instead of explaining it, I'll actually show you an example. If I lift this one up before it's done, you can see a lot of the caramelized sugar is left down there. And some of it comes with the bread, but we wanna actually drop this down over that sugar and kind of press into it to pick it all up. Some could maybe argue that that's burnt. I don't really think so. I could also be biased, a little embarrassing, you know? This one's done now too. I understand that at this point, you may be very hungry and wanna eat your French toast right away, but there is one last very important step, and that's to cook the rest of the custard on the center of that French toast. When we soaked our French toast earlier, some of that egg custard goes to the middle. So with one last quick bake, we make sure that it's fully set in the middle. Bake it at 300 for about 10 minutes. While our French toast does that one last final cook, we will make some quick whipped cream. I don't know why, but I love making my own whipped cream. You can obviously buy it pre-made, but it literally takes seconds to make it from scratch and it tastes so much better. My only pro tip when it comes to making whipped cream is to chill your whisk attachments and your bowl in the freezer before you make it. That helps it come together faster and will actually create a nicer consistency. I'm being a bit lazy today and using a hand mixer, but if you still have energy in either of your arms after whisking together those egg yolks, you can definitely do this by hand as well. The only things I'm gonna do to this whipped cream are add in a bit of sugar, just enough to give it a light kick of sweetness, but not too much because that French toast is already very sweet, as well as just a bit of orange zest. I'm not gonna go overboard here either, but releasing some of those orange oils into our whipped cream is a game changer. Watch carefully as you get closer and closer to your whipped cream being finished. You don't wanna over whip it. The whipped cream can start to get almost chunky and separated and that's not what we're looking for and it's not really whipped cream anymore. Once it holds together, but it's still silky smooth like this, that's when you should stop. By now, our French toast should be done in the oven. So I will carefully pull this out and then to plate, move that off to the side, grab my fresh berries. I got all the different berries here just to have a mix of everything. Then grab your favorite plate. I think I'm gonna be able to handle about two slices today. I'm gonna top this off with some fresh berries. I love blueberries, they're my favorite, so that's why I added a few extra there. Look at how it already pops off the plate though. Isn't that awesome? Then I'll go over this with a nice drizzle of maple syrup. Oh yeah. I've created this little swimming pool of maple syrup on top for my berries. That was not by accident. Then I'll top it all off with some of my homemade whipped cream and I kind of let this drape right over the sides. I don't wanna totally cover up all my French toast. I still wanna be able to see what's going on here. Then I'll hit the whole thing with a nice dusting of powdered sugar. Then one last dusting of orange zest. And to finish it all off, a little pinch of salt. A small pinch of the salt here is actually gonna bring out the sweetness of the berries and the whipped cream and help to balance everything out. And that is how you make French toast. Oh, I almost forgot the knife throw. I don't know, maybe these are better than pancakes.