The Modern Day Julie/Julia Project- French Toast

Hello there!

Part one of this series was a disastrous attempt at a dalgona coffee- here’s hoping that this French Toast works out better! If you haven’t seen part one of this series feel free to check it out here.

So, after I made last week’s coffee, I started thinking- since this series was inspired by the author of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” Julia Child; maybe I should dive a bit more into the French way of cooking. However, as I have said before, the extent of my knowledge of French cuisine doesn’t stem further than eating a croissant.

Therefore, I decided to start small. Today, I’m going to be attempting to make a French Toast. (Julia Child is probably turning in her grave as I compare French cuisine to a piece of toast).

Once again, let’s take a little history lesson.

The origin story that’s mostly accepted is that a man named Joseph French invented it in 1724, in New York. It’s then said that he advertised it as “French Toast” instead of “French’s Toast” because he was grammatically inept.

From now on, this story is going to be my defence for being a Grammar Nazi- if you have bad grammar, your inventions might change nationalities!

However, some say that French Toast was actually invented in France! Who would’ve thunk it? It’s said that it was actually a way for French cooks to use every bit of bread they had left- why waste? They knew that if you added moisture and heat to stale bread, you could revive it. It was then given the name “pain perdu” which translates to “lost bread” (Thank you 10th grade French!)

There are also countless versions of French toast- depending on where you’re eating it.

If you’re in Scotland you might find a sausage with some ketchup, sandwiched between 2 french toasts. If you’re in Italy, you might find a similar sandwich, except with mozzarella instead of a sausage. Spain makes a “torrija” which is a sort of fried, wine soaked version of a french toast. If you’re here in India, you’ll find the incredibly desi-fied version, which is a savoury, unsweetened version, with onions, chillies, ketchup and masalas.

Today, I’m going to be making a much simpler version than the above mentioned variants.

Let’s get started!

Credit to the original recipe I used, you can find it here.

So, once again, (of course) I spent a total sum of 2 hours just taking pictures.

Now, if I’m being totally honest- I’ve never actually tried french toast before. So I was definitely apprehensive about how it would taste, especially since I’m not really the biggest fan of the obvious taste of egg, and I have no reference point. However, I’m a total sucker for anything with cinnamon- and yes, before you ask, I did double the amount of cinnamon that the recipe called for.

I also didn’t have brown sugar, and I’ve heard that white sugar is less sweet, so I used 3 tablespoons of white sugar in place of 2 tablespoons of brown sugar.

Now, this recipe wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; it was actually pretty straightforward – even I couldn’t mess it up. Okay that’s a lie. 

If I’m totally honest, there were absolutely some egg shells that I had to sit and pick out, as well as several burns all over my hands- but that’s inevitable! Right?

This recipe was actually surprisingly simple . I’m sure we have all gone through those moments where we need to use an entire loaf of bread in a day, because it’s about to expire.

I’ll definitely be making this again, because it’s simple, right to the point, and efficiently delicious!

I would absolutely say that this recipe was a success. My family loved it so much, that I’ve already made it 3 times since. I haven’t decided whether or not thats a good thing! The scars all over my hands say otherwise.

Next time, we’re going to deviate a little from the sweeter recipes, and move on to something a little more savoury. I’ll be…sorry, we’ll be making…something beer battered! I’m not exactly sure what yet, but it’ll definitely be something beer battered, solely because it sounds super cool.

Until Next Time.