A Food Question

[gnomi]

First, I want to apologize for being sort of content-light this week so far. Things have been busy since last Friday. I will strive to provide more interesting content than just birthday greetings.

And now my food question. When I was growing up, my mother made French toast (vive la France!) (sorry, that's a French toast. Never mind) using leftover (and sometimes vaguely stale, because if it's going to be soaked in egg and milk, staleness doesn't matter) challah. And in my own kitchen, I can't imagine making French toast with anything else. But I know that most American households' freezers are not as filled with half-loaves of challah as mine is. Which led me to wonder -- what sort of bread do people traditionally use for French toast?

ETA: My mother's challah recipe.

Comments

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

I don't make it at home now, but when I was little my mom made it with regular ole white bread.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Which is probably not nearly as tasty as French Toast made with challah.

[glishara.livejournal.com]

Whatever I have! French bread works really well, but more often than not, I just use whatever sliced bread I have: whole-grain works well. If it's too light, it soaks up too much egg; if it's too dense, it doesn't get eggy enough.

But I am fairly unpicky. Market basket brand sliced Italian bread? Sure. Pepperidge Farms cinnamon swirl loaf? Sure! There isn't much tradition, I guess, other than "bread".

[thespisgeoff.livejournal.com]

It's best with challah or brioche, which is pretty universally recognized. I had challah french toast at a Cuban restaurant in Detroit a couple of years ago and laughed at the internationalism.

At home I tend to make it with plain ole' whole wheat, which is all the bread I normally have hanging around (unless I've baked challah, which these days is once every six months.) It makes for a chewier toast since the custard doesn't have much room to move, but it works in a pinch.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

That's a toast to France. In French.

Maybe I'm stuck in traditions or simply picky, but French Toast(s?) made with other breads just never seemed as good.

[diannefox.livejournal.com]

We use any firm white bread, but I love French toast made with challah. I could eat challah all the time, really, in just about any form. Yum!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Challah if we have it, any other kind of bread, if we don't. Well, not rye or pumpernickel. But white bread, whole wheat, scali, anything else.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Now, I bet one could invent a very good savory French toast using rye bread. (Maybe not pumpernickel, though.) Topped with creme fraiche and lox? Hmmm...

My mom certainly only ever used white/wheat sandwich-loaf type of bread for French toast -- and so do I on the majority of occasions, since that's what's always in the house (and stale challah is only sometimes, though I think there might indeed be some in our freezer at the moment, awaiting its French-toasty destiny).

[thesilia.livejournal.com]

whatever loaf we have lying around for sandwiches, though if my father-in-law's challah is hanging around (which it never does for long!) we prefer it above all others. yum-diggity-dog!

[gem225.livejournal.com]

These days I use Iggy's French bread, a little dried out if possible because that's better for absorbing the good milk and eggs and vanilla, and bake my French toast in the oven (so easy!), but my mother always made French toast with pre-sliced white bread and fried it on the griddle in the middle of our stove.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

I use your mother's --and my grandmother's-- method. Perhaps I shall ask rivka to show me how to make challah when we do bread-making lessons. It sounds yummy!

[sethg]

My mother used Pepperidge Farm White (which last I checked, sadly, was not hekhshered) when I was a kid.

[moonpuppy61.livejournal.com]

My family made it with white bread. In the suburbs. On Sundays. I am such a stereotype.

[cellio]

Mine too! I like it better with challah (an alternative I didn't encounter until adulthood).

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

I grew up making it with sliced white bread; we now use fresh-baked white loaves from Whole Foods, again generally when they are stale.

My husband, who's English, calls it "eggy bread" -- he uses less milk to eggs than I do and peppers the batter; while I eat (my version) with syrup or with cinnamon and sugar, he eats his plain. And while I use butter in the pan, he uses olive oil. (We've gotten to the point where we just each make our own, sequentially, so we're having our different versions together.) The one time I ordered it in England they thought my request for maple syrup was deeply bizarre.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

Ah, two countries/cultures separated by a common language!

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

LJ ate my post! And it wasn't even covered in cinnamon sugar. :(

The basic principle is you want a bread dense enough to stand up to soaking and frying, and either sweet or neutral rather than sour or savory. Hence the focus on challah, brioche, and neutral white/french loaves.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Brioche - because, after all, it's French!

We also make it with Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Swirl Bread (not with raisins, without). It makes a sort of egg-flavored cinnamon roll experience.

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

Store brand, 100% whole wheat, straight from the freezer. Whole wheat is naturally dense and frozen makes up for lack of staleness.

Heavy on both calories and nutritional content, but it is mostly going into the ten-year-old boy who is going through a growth spurt.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Whatever I have. Challah, of course, but also Portuguese sweet bread works really well, although it is rarely around long enough to get stale to be turned into French toast. Italian or french bread.

I wonder how French toast with pita would work. Might have to play around with it this weekend. Probably slice it to allow the egg to permeate the inside of the pita.

MMMM challah!

[mercurysparkle.livejournal.com]

Howdy (it's Renee - Joel's fiance - I really should get used to saying that). Thank you for posting the challah recipe! I'm looking around for a new one as my batches always come out rather dry. :)

[baiacou.livejournal.com]

Interesting. My husband claims that French Toast is traditionally made with sourdough. My mother, on the other hand, always made it with whatever bread was in the house: at first Wonder white, then whole-grain.

Challah sounds like a fabulous bread for it!

[half-double.livejournal.com]

Anything we've got. We've used challah, 12-grain and sourdough. My mom always used oatmeal bread.

[rivkaesque.livejournal.com]

Most restaurants these days use challah - I have to admit, the first time I got challah french toast with bacon I giggled.

[shimshonit.livejournal.com]

I use leftover challah too. The best, though, is homemade chocolate chip challah (or, if you're lucky enough to live near Rosenfeld's, theirs). That's just too decadent. Putting real maple syrup on that is gilding the lily for sure.

[perpet.livejournal.com]

Before I went gluten-free, I always had it with Texas Toast. Nothing like a true slab of bread for French toast. Now, we use my gluten-free bread, which works up nicely. Occasionally, I'll bake a loaf of gf bread, and we'll slice it to slab proportions for the occasion.

[julia-talbot.livejournal.com]

my mom used white bread, or the occasional stale french loaf. I use anything gluten free that works...

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

All these posters like little burnt lumps of dough? That's what "challah" usually is. See http://www.chabad.org/library/howto/wizard_cdo/aid/363326/jewish/1.-What-Is-Challah.htm for example

Challah is the offering taken out of sufficiently large batches of bread or cake dough. It is usually a small ball, left in the bottom of the oven to burn up. In antiquity, it would have been [? baked and] given to a local priest.

Any kind of bread, if baked by a Jew, must have challah taken out. To call a specific kind of eggy twist bread "challah" is a bit misleading, it's close to the fallacy of "container for the thing contained."

Gnomi gnows all this, of course, I'm just being pedantic for others.

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

At home it's just regular old store brand bread, usually white bread. But if I get anything other than challah in a diner I am horrified. ;)

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

White sandwich loaf, because that's what we kept in the house. I am trying to remember what brands we usually got when I was growing up -- because I KNOW we didn't make French toast with my mom's thin-sliced Hollywood Bread. Pepperidge Farm or Brick Oven, probably. We may, on occasion, have made French toast with scala bread, although the sesame seeds would have been weird.

[eal.livejournal.com]

Sigh.

Sourdough French is the favorite around here.

We actually haven't had french toast much since we got the new bread machine. Bread never lasts long enough to get stale.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, I had no idea until I read the comments here that challah French toast had spread so far into the non-Jewish mainstream!

My sense is that the American mainstream standard has been to use sliced white sandwich bread. Take a look at the frozen brands, for instance.

Have you tried French toast made with English muffins?