French Toast

My favorite meal has always been breakfast. There is something about a steaming cup of coffee, with warm french toast and fresh fruit. It really helps to get a great day started. While I was growing up we had waffles or pancakes every Saturday morning. As I'm sure most of you can relate, the other mornings during the week are just too difficult and there isn't enough time to prepare a big breakfast. Another great time to serve a big breakfast is for dinner. While I was growing up those were the dinners we had while my dad was away on business, as he always wanted a meal that had meat...typical man.

Now that Chris and I are married, I've continued the tradition of preparing a big breakfast on Saturday's. Unfortunately Chris works a couple weekends a month, which only leaves 2 Saturdays a month for me to prepare a nice Saturday morning breakfast.

Recently I across this amazing recipe by Ina Garten for french toast. If you're like us, you purchase a loaf of bread to serve with soup or meat, then you only eat half the loaf. What do you do with the rest of the bread? Often in our house the bread will go stale before we get to it again. I love finding recipes that I can make with my leftovers. You can prepare this recipe with about any leftover bread you have.

Challah French Toast

Ingredients

• 6 extra-large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups half-and-half or milk
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon good honey
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 large loaf challah or brioche bread (I use whatever heavy bread I have on hand)
  
• Unsalted butter
• Vegetable oil

To serve:

• Pure maple syrup (I have an extremely easy recipe for homemade syrup...I'll blog it soon.)
  
• Sifted confectioners' sugar (optional)
• Raspberry Preserves (optional)
  

Directions

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.

In a large shallow bowl, whisk together the eggs, half-and-half, orange zest, vanilla, honey, and salt.

Slice the bread in 3/4-inch thick slices.

Soak as many slices in the egg mixture as possible for 5 minutes, turning once.

Heat 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon oil in a very large saute pan over medium heat.

Add the soaked bread and cook for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until nicely browned.

Place the cooked French toast on a sheet pan and keep it warm in the oven. Fry the remaining soaked bread slices, adding butter and oil as needed, until it's all cooked.

Place a couple slides of french toast on each plate.

Sift confectioners sugar over the top.

Serve hot maple syrup and raspberry preserves.