Lille Allen/Eater; see below for full photo credits
We tested three popular French toast recipes to find the one we could easily whip up for a crowd
Maybe it’s just me, but pancakes feel like an any-weekend food, while French toast feels more special occasion. Perhaps it’s the fact that I grew up with the assumption that French toast required planning and couldn’t be made on a whim: Not only did the bread need a while to soak, it also had to be stale before soaking. For this reason, I don’t make French toast too often.
But with visions of holiday mornings in my head — twinkly warm lights, the smell of cinnamon wafting from somewhere — it seemed high time to revisit French toast and to test whether my assumption was actually justified. Does French toast have to be a pre-planned affair, or can you just whip it up on the fly?
To see whether dried versus fresh bread, or long-soak versus quick, really matters, I tested three popular French toast recipes from around the internet, using challah for each one. What I was looking for was moist, eggy-flavored bread that tasted good even without being covered with butter and maple syrup. Here’s what I found.
Classic French Toast
Lauren Allen, Tastes Better from Scratch
This recipe, which claims the top spot in Google’s search results for “French toast recipe,” challenged my assumption that French toast requires planning. It claims that though it’s “nice” to use stale bread, it’s not necessary. And it requires no soaking at all — just quickly dipping the bread in the milk-and-egg mixture, to which Allen adds flour. She claims this results in “extra fluffy” French toast; I can attest it makes the mixture thicker and more like a batter.
Allen’s recipe was certainly the easiest of the ones I tried. It’s nice to be able to think, I want French toast and have it finished within just a few minutes. That being said, the end results revealed the downside of the expedited process. The inside of the bread didn’t seem to suck up any of the soaking mixture; its interior looked basically indistinguishable from a regular slice of challah. And while Allen claims the flour adds fluffiness, my finished French toast claimed otherwise. Overall, this French toast felt more like lightly griddled, sweetened bread — somewhat dry even after the addition of maple syrup.
I think the success of this recipe depends on what you’re looking for from French toast. I’m sure some people aren’t looking for a soft, wet French toast, and I’d say this recipe is for them. But for my own tastes, I knew I could do better.
Perfect Quick-and-Easy French Toast
Daniel Gritzer, Serious Eats
Serious Eats editorial director Daniel Gritzer brings his publication’s signature rigorous testing to this “perfect” French toast recipe. Like Allen’s recipe, Gritzer’s is meant to be relatively quick: something you can whip up without much forethought. He extends his process slightly, however, by drying the bread in the oven, which takes about 10 minutes at a low temperature. That’s still faster, of course, than waiting for bread to go stale. Gritzer calls for taking this dried bread and soaking it for a few minutes in the milk-and-egg mixture. Before flipping each slice of French toast, you sprinkle on some sugar.
I found that the dried bread definitely sucked up the egg bath, which I could feel the instant I lifted the slices to transfer them to the pan. The interior of each slice was soft, squishy, and lightly eggy in flavor, while the sprinkle of sugar gave the exterior a little bit of a crust. Compared to Allen’s take, this French toast seemed the most transformed from the initial slice of challah. It read a little more wet, which, again, aligned with my personal preference.
Easy Overnight French Toast
Holly Nilsson, Spend with Pennies
Holly Nilsson’s French toast recipe feels engineered for a holiday morning, when you’ve already spent the previous day cooking a feast and still have a crowd of people to feed. What makes it so appealing is that you do all the work the night before. Nilsson’s recipe calls for placing oven-dried bread on a baking sheet on which you’ve already mixed melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. You then pour a milk and egg mixture over the bread, cover it, and put the whole thing in the fridge overnight. In the morning, all you have to do is put the baking sheet in the oven.
I definitely appreciated the ease of this recipe, especially considering it allows you to have several slices of French toast done at once, instead of leaving people waiting while you cook them in batches in a pan. This recipe uses the most eggs of the bunch, calling for an entire dozen eggs per loaf of bread (for context, Allen’s recipe uses four), but has a relatively low amount of milk by comparison (1½ cups; Allen’s calls for ⅔ cup). The bread soaks pretty nicely, but texturally, I found the result at the midpoint between Gritzer’s and Allen’s — neither dry nor wet. The mixture of butter and melted sugar added a deep, slightly caramelized flavor that made each slice enjoyable even before I added maple syrup.
The Winner: Serious Eats
For my taste in French toast, Gritzer’s recipe was the clear winner. The slightly dried, soaked bread had the custardy, tender texture I’m after, but the caramelized sugar crust sent it over the edge — textural variation! Both this recipe and Nilsson’s proved to me that it’s still worth using oven-dried or stale bread and giving it some time to soak. A truly quick version of French toast, like Allen’s, is possible, sure, but I think the results show what you lose in the process. As much as I liked Gritzer’s recipe, I’d probably reach for Nilsson’s if I really had to feed a crowd.
French toast photos by Bettina Makalintal
