Gemma's Best French Toast Recipe

Hi Bold Bakers! I love French toast, when you get it in a restaurant and it’s really thick and soft on the inside. But do you ever try and make it at home and you don't get the same results? Well I am going to share with you some tricks of the trade so that you can make the ultimate French toast every single time. So what I want you to do after this video is head over to BiggerBolderBaking.com, get the recipe, go into the kitchen, and whip yourself up some French toast. So let’s talk bread. Now this is very important when it comes to your French toast. You want to pick thick bread. You can use a Texas toast, I have brioche here which is lovely and buttery, you can use challah, just whatever you use make sure it is nice and thick so it soaks up all of that custard. So French toast, it’s a very decadent dish, so what I like to do, just to go above and beyond, is butter each slice of bread on both sides. This will make it nice and crispy and brown. So for French toast it actually helps if your bread is a little bit stale, maybe a day or two old, it will soak up the custard so much better. So that's our bread, now let's talk custard. Now you want to start out in a nice wide dish because you're going to have to put your bread in there. Now we’re going to mix up all of our ingredients. First things first are our eggs. So we’re going to put some whole eggs in there, and then here's my secret ingredient, some egg yolks. Now what this does is it creates a kind of an eggier custard, you know the way you have a crème brûlée, or crème anglaise, this is what we’re creating in this dish. So that’s that. Next we are going to add in some cream. Now you can use all-purpose cream, that's totally fine, if you don't have cream, you can use half and half, and you can use milk as well but cream just gives that extra level of richness. Then into this we’re going to add a little bit of sugar for some sweetness, and then were going to add in a little bit of cinnamon, this just gives lovely warmth to the dish. So the next thing I'm going to add in is some vanilla extract, now this just adds lovely flavor to your French toast. So in you go. And then with a whisk, just bring it all together. This is a super simple custard, this dish could not be easier. I remember when I was young in Ireland and my mum would whip up French toast for us and we just thought she was some sort of culinary wizard. Okay so we have our custard, our bread is ready to go, now it’s time to soak it. So I'm going to share with you a little chef’s secret that you might not know. In restaurants they soak their French toast for maybe an hour, two hours, even overnight in the custard. So then the next day when you order it, it is thick and I’ is moist and it’s just absolutely delicious. So that's what we’re going to do. But we’re actually only going to soak ours for half an hour. So what you want to do is take your bread, lay it into your custard, and let it sit there for 15 minutes. And then once the 15 minutes is up, turn it over and let it soak up on the other side. In my opinion the real key to ultimate French toast is the soakage. You want really good soakage. That's why I like to leave mine for as long as I can. Okay so it’s been half an hour, my bread has soaked all the way through, it is heavy with custard, which is exactly what I want, now it is time to fry them off. So in a heavy bottomed saucepan, over a medium to low heat, we’re going to add in some butter. Now the butter is just going to help the French toast not to stick, but of course butter just makes everything taste better, so why not? And then when the butter starts to bubble, and you got nice heat in your pan, add in your French toast. Now just let your French toast sit there by itself, don't move it, let it cook for around 3 minutes or so until it gets golden brown on one side. Once it’s lovely golden brown on one side, go ahead, flip it over, and then just cook it for another minute or two on that side until that's also golden brown. So our French toast is looking rockstar but the very last thing we’re going to do is pop it into the oven at 400º Fahrenheit or 200º Celsius for roughly 7-10 minutes just to make sure that the egg is cooked the whole way through. So finally the wait is over when the French toast comes out of the oven it is ready to be plated. So you probably know this about me already but I'm pretty generous with my portions, so I am going to put 3 thick slices of French toast one on top of the other, to create a mammoth stack of French toast. For a little extra sweetness I love to add some fruit to it, so there's some strawberries and a few fresh blueberries. Then of course, we need this guy, maple syrup. And a lot of it. So be super generous with this, just keep going, I love my French toast to be drenched in maple syrup. Fantastic. Okay so now one here to me because I want you to see why I'm saying this is the ultimate recipe. Check that out. You see how thick that is? And the custard has soaked all the way through. This is French toast perfection. Okay, time to enjoy. This definitely deserves a happy dance. I love this recipe. Mm. This French toast is thick, crispy in the outside and soft in the middle, it is the perfect way to start a big and bold day. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I’ll see you back here really soon, for more Bigger Bolder Baking.