Burt's French Toast

For the batter:

• 6 eggs
• 1/2 cup half & half
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp buttermilk
• 1/8 cup brown sugar
• cinnamon & nutmeg (as much as you'd like)

Put all of the ingredients in to a nice wide bowl and whisk to combine. The batter should have a nice uniform yellow color that will remind you of egg nog. (BTW, you can replace the half & half with egg nog, be sure to add a couple of tablespoons of milk to thin the egg nog. Also you can leave out the vanilla, buttermilk, and nutmeg.)

This amount of batter should be enough for 12 to 13 slices of regular sandwich bread, about 8 slices of Texas Toast, or about 10 slices of french bread cut to a 3/4 inch thickness.

For best results, be sure to dry bread out so that the outsides of the bread are dry to the touch, but the interior of the bread is still soft. About 12 minutes in a 225 degree oven should do the trick. Place the bread in half sheet pan on a cooking/cooling rack that fits inside the pan. Flip the bread slices after about 6 minutes so both sides dry evenly.

If you don't have the rack that fits inside a half sheet pan then put the bread directly onto the oven rack arranging them in such a way that they don't fall through. When placing the bread directly onto the oven rack it won't be necessary to flip them.

After you take the dried bread out of the oven, turn it down 200 degrees and leave in/put a half sheet pan inside. If you have a cooking/cooling rack leave that in the pan too. As the toast comes out of the frying pan or griddle, you will put them in the oven to finish cooking the interior of the toast.

Heat up a non-stick frying pan on medium heat. Right before you put a piece of soaked bread into the pan to cook use a little spray oil on the part of the pan where the bread will go. This will ensure the bread won't stick. If you have one, an electric griddle is ideal for this because you will be able to fry multiple slices of toast at one time. Since the toast goes into the oven to finish, bigger batches will help ensure that all of the slices don't overcook and dry out before all of the slices are done.

Cooking the French Toast

Step 1: Put the dried bread into the batter and let soak on each side for a few seconds. You want the liquid to penetrate to the middle of the bread. Drying out the bread before hand ensures that you let the bread soak, but won't turn into a soggy mess when you try to put it in the pan.

Step 2: Cook on each side until the side is a mostly uniform golden brown. This should take about 3 to 5 minutes per side. If it takes longer than that your pan may be too cool. If your toast gets darker than that in that time, turn the temperature down. You can even wave the pan through the air to cool it down between batches a little.

Step 3: Put the cooked slices into the heated oven on the half sheet pan to continue slowly cooking the interior of the toast while you finish the rest of the slices. They only need about 7 minutes in the oven before they are ready to serve.

Take them out of the oven warm, cover with whatever (butter, syrup, etc) you'd like and enjoy!

I'll add pictures to this post next time I make french toast.