Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Baked Challah French Toast

Photobucket


I love breakfast foods! When I got to a diner I'm always torn between ordering breakfast or lunch. I love french onion soup but give me some french toast and a poached egg and I'm so happy. It all depends on what everyone else is ordering though. If I am sitting there enjoying my soup and then I get a whiff of bacon and eggs...deep regret. I'm just so indecisive when it comes to this!

Last year Steve and I got a few couples together to go apple picking. Everyone met at our place first for breakfast. That was so much fun for me! I experimented with baked french toast and it was a huge hit! So last weekend when my childhood friend stayed over with her Fiance there was a request for a repeat of this dish. I was happy to make it again but the only problem was that I combined a few different recipes and never wrote down what I did. That was before I started this lovely little blog that forces me to write down recipes! I did find some notes scribbled onto one paper but not enough information was there. Now that I made it again I think I left out a step. Oops. I didn't bake the french toast again with the topping which is what I think I was supposed to do. I didn't have the topping in the oven at all. I'm pretty sure that's wrong now that I think about it. I also feel like 3 cups of milk is a lot. I will try it next time with a little less because it seemed a little wet in the middle and it was cooking at 425 and got nice and browned on top. I think in the future I will cook it for about an hour at 350.

The taste was great! I don't think it was missing anything at all! I would absolutely make this again and now that I have this written down I will be able to perfect it. Wish me Luck!


Ingredients:

French Toast:

1 loaf Challah Bread, cut into 1 inch slices
3 cups whole milk
3 eggs, beaten
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon

Topping:

1/2 cup butter, melted
2 tbsp dark corn syrup or maple syrup
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts


Directions:

1. In a baking dish layer slices of bread so that they are touching and rip a slice of bread into pieces to fill in any holes. Make two layers.

2. In a bowl combine eggs, milk, sugar, extracts, nutmeg and cinnamon. Pour this mixture over bread. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

3. Next morning, preheat oven to 350. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan melt butter and take off the heat. Add corn syrup/maple syrup, brown sugar and nuts. Stir to combine and it will make a paste.

4. Spread mixture over bread that soaked up eggs and milk.

Bake for approximately 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.


Like I said above, I did this wrong. I baked it before I put the topping on. This is what it looked like puffed up and golden.

Photobucket

Here's the topping!
Photobucket

18 comments:

Bob said...

I'm with you on getting breakfast or lunch at diners. I can never decide, I almost always wind up getting pancakes. That looks great, I love french toast. I've never had it baked though, I'm not sure why. I'll have to fix that.

Lucy..♥ said...

Love, Love, Love THIS!!! ;-)

Elizabeth said...

Yum - I love challah french toast!

Michele said...

Bob - It's so hard to decide between the two!

Thanks Lucy!

Hi Elizabeth! Isn't it so much better than plain old white bread?!

Anonymous said...

There's something on my blog for you :)

Unknown said...

I love french toast and this one looks especially yummy!

Anonymous said...

Ok, first, something that looks that good is NOT "wrong". LOL Second......YUMMMO!

Theresa said...

This has become one of my favorites!!

Sophie said...

I LOVE french toast :)!!! I'd eat this every day, yep :D.

Sophie said...

oh btw, hominy is made from corn but has quite a different texture, it's soo good, more meaty than corn--you should try it!

The Blonde Duck said...

I have the same problem you do. I usually just demand Ben take me two nights in a row! This looks absolutely heavenly.

vanillasugarblog said...

Oh I just saw this somewhere and they put bacon in it.
Challah really is the best though. Have you ever tried the baked croissant french toast? I think it was on Barefoot Contessa

Daziano said...

I discovered Challah bread not a long time ago... and I totally love it! Never thought of making French toast with it! Thaks for the idea!

Pat @ Mille Fiori Favoriti said...

Challah bread makes the very best French toast! I never tried making it as a whole loaf --I usually slice it and dip and fry each piece at a time but you way looks so easy. I'll definitely try it next time i have over night guests.

Cate said...

Mmm, love baked french toast. Paula Deen has a recipe for it that we like, a praline version. Ok, now it's 11 pm and I'm craving baked french toast. ;)

Mary Bergfeld said...

This looks like a wonderful recipe. With Easter coming this would be a lovely dish for breakfast.

David said...

This is looking delicious. I love french toast. Recipe is not very tough, i must try.
Visit

Unknown said...

This is the BEST french toast recipe. I have cooked it for my entire family and it's a consensus. YUM!!