To achieve crispy French toast, dip bread in an egg mixture and then coat it with cornflakes or crushed cereal before cooking. This dual-dip method is a delicious twist on the classic pain perdu recipe. The recipe requires large eggs, milk and/or heavy cream, vanilla extract, and cinnamon. For a crunchy exterior, add caramelized sugar crust to the batter.
To make this homemade French toast, heat a baking sheet in the oven until oil is just smoking, about 4 minutes. Arrange bread in an even layer on the sheet and bake until the exterior is golden brown and crunchy. For a sweeter taste, sprinkle lightly with sugar.
To make a fluffy, soft, and moist French toast, use high-heat oil like sunflower or avocado oil when pan-frying. Cornstarch can enhance the dish by creating a crispier exterior while maintaining a tender, custard-like interior. Fry the soaked bread in butter, turning frequently to prevent burning and evaporate moisture.
To make crunchy French toast, start by crushing up the cereal in a Ziplock bag, sealing and crushing with your hands. Lay the bread on a baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown and crispy.
In summary, making crispy French toast involves using eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla. To achieve a crispy exterior, use high-heat oil and crush up the cereal. Toasting the bread before making the toast helps trap moisture inside while keeping the outside crisp and crunchy.
📹 Crispy French toast
***RECIPE*** thick sliced bread, brioche or challah are particularly good eggs (one for every 2-4 pieces, depending on how …
📹 How To Make French Toast | Moist inside, Crispy outside.
Learn how to make traditional French toast in this easy and delicious recipe tutorial. With just a few simple ingredients, you can …
I’ll be honest, always loved french toast but I didn’t know it was supposed to be a somewhat sweet thing until I was like 20. For our home it was always just a quick egg and milk mix like we’d used for scrambled eggs, dip the bread and fry it up, in fact we would just use the left over mix to make scrambled eggs to go along with it.
The nuance of the super long soak (my personal favorite) is that it bakes longer in the oven and puffs up way more. Essentially, it’s a bread soufflé. The thicker the slice, the more pronounced the contrast between exterior and interior. The downside is that, like all soufflés, it has a short half-life and turns dense when it deflates and cools, making it bad for leftovers. Chef John’s baked French toast article is a great primer on this if it sounds like your thing.
I made French Toast just a few hours ago! It was not crispy, I never try to go for “crispyness”, but I’ll try that next time. Elsewise, my recipe is the same as you, except I use baguette slices (I’m in France, baguette is pretty great here), and it makes for more bite-size portions. The crispyness of the baguette crust and softness of the core is what I like, with a soak for a few minutes. Since the outside crust acts like a ring holding the slices in shape, a long soak is ok, especially if I cook on low. I’ll try the panko next time!
Tried this for the first time today after craving some good breakfast food and all my typical spots being closed. I picked up a fresh loaf of French Bread from a local bakery because they didn’t have brioche. This definitely exceeded my expectations! The crunch from the panko is a great texture addition for a comparative low amount of effort. I’ll make this again!
Love the article Adam! Small tip that seems to work for me, when I add cinnamon, I always add it directly to the eggs. This way it just seems to distribute better across the whole custard when you then add the cream. Much better than when you add it to the cream and it ends up floating up! Although this could well be placebo, but my own tests have lead me to begin following this. 🙂
Here in Poland french toast is usually a savoury dish – at the very least eggs, pepper and salt, or, if you like a bit more flavour like I do, you can add a glug of olive oil, a splash of wine (white wine is the best because it doesn’t discolour the batter) and some herbs and spices I’ve never seen anyone in Poland eat french toast sweet
We can buy sticks of clarified butter (not browned like Ghee) in the supermarket here in Germany. It’s fairly heat stable so it works great for shallow frying virtually anything and it takes forever to spoil when you keep it stored in the fridge. It’s usually not much more expensive than a regular stick of butter, too. I recommend keeping some of it around in your fridge, it’s quity handy for quickly frying something with buttery aroma.
If you haven’t tried it yet, I super suggest sourdough for the bread! It is my favorite ever, and you dont have to worry about it getting cushed too much(as long as you get a nice sturdy one). I like the cut sourdough from trader joes – the tang is a good balance, and the texture is just unlike any other french toast I have ever had.
In my house growing up we never had white bread; our all-purpose sandwich bread was challah baked in a normal rectangular loaf pan. My mom never put anything in her french toast custard except eggs and milk, and at the table we only used the “fake” syrup and it was still better than any french toast I’ve ever tried with white bread.
Gotta say, nutmeg really makes the flavor that much richer. Chef used to carry around a fresh nutmeg in his apron pocket,– it’s not just Alton! Always use a little more vanilla than you think, especially of your bread is thick! I’m partial to half n half, as it adds a little more natural milk sweetness so I use less sugar and isn’t as rich if I’m frying it in lots of butter (like you are here). A local place does babka bread crumbs for their crust, and while VERY tasty it isn’t that crunchy so I’m excited to give panko a try!
In Germany there is a savory version of this. We, or at least my family, call it ”Arme Ritter” which means poor knights in german. It is just toast, soaked in beaten eggs then fried in oil with a slice of cheese or bacon or both. We use fresh toast for this but this recipe got me thinking to try it with dried or somewhat toastet toast. Thanks for that.
For those people that lives in places with lots of Chinese/Japanese gorcery (eg: vancouver), the other type of bread you can try is their Sandwich Loaf — especially teh HongKong style Sandwich Bread loaf. (I suspect it’s actually a variant of Brioche, tbh). Someone can check if the Filipino sandwich loaf is similar too.
I do the whole sugar free diet. When i make french toast, I usually make an eggy bread with spices in it. then slice it thick and let it stale for 3 days. then i let it soak in a full tray of custard until none remains. it’ll absorb all of it. then into the oven it goes. high heat. i don’t do crunch top cause people i make it for and myself find it kinda… useless?? and on top of that the crunch texture i get from the crispy eggs i serve with it or the fact the custard sugar free mixture gets a slight crunch on the outside being seared and caramelizing. But i love my french toast eggy and served with eggs 😛 we’re talking 24+eggs for a nice sunday french toast eggstraveganza
Wow, I’ve been waiting for a french toast recipe! I never tried using panko, this seems like a great addition. One thing I would recommend is using 5 spice, as I find just adding cinnamon in french toast bland. The ingredients in my five spice powder uses cinnamon, star anise, fennel, ginger, cloves and licorice root. It makes the french toast taste on this own super nice and doesn’t need any whipped cream to make it sweeter than it is.
I have never seen anyone put butter in the pan when cooking French Toast, nor have I seen them use breadcrumbs to make them crispy. In fact, I don’t think I have ever had crispy French Toast at all, so I’m not sure if this is genius or sacrilege. Then again, I have had French Toast made from thick cut cinnamon raisin bread and dusted with powdered sugar, so who am I to judge?
I’ve always disliked my families version of french toast due to the fact they would do the exact opposite of what you did. Pull the bread out of the fridge, quick whisk 2% milk, eggs, pinch of sugar, and a pinch of cinnamon. Quick dip. Toast not fry with a neutral oil. They were mostly blonde as well
Yeah, that’s one of the few things Adam does that I won’t be trying. My kind of french toast is gooey and extremely custardy. Never thought about it before, but it’s probably not food safe. But I’m still here, so not like I’m going to change now. I like it so soft I can hardly pick it up with a fork. And in my book, syrup is for waffles and pancakes. In fact, if French toast is served with the syrup already on it, it’s a deal-breaker for me. Not into that. Lots of butter on top and more than a dusting of powdered sugar. A little cinnamon before the butter… Yum.
This is so weird. I’ve had home-made and restaurant-made French toast all over the world, and I’ve never heard of crispy french toast before. It’s always fresh bread/brioche dipped and soaked in bread and pan fried golden brown, but still soft. Some of the best French toast I’ve had was at a fancy restaurant in south east Asia, where they used really thick bread and managed to keep the inside super soft and moist. This crispy French toast, is it an American thing?
if you add cinnamon, try adding some freshly grated nutmeg too, its wonderful. you dont dont fry the edges too? i like the texture better if they are touched up that way. also, instead of a solid spatula, try a big fish turner style one with big empty sections so you dont scoop up all the butter too, makes it so there are less dry spots in the pan imo. in any event cheers for the article!
Hey Adam, Can you tell us a little about reheating food. I am from SEAsia, we eat the same food for lunch and dinner. My mother often keeps the food outside, and prefers not to keep it in the fridge for such low time durations. What is the recomm. Max no of times you should reheat? Is it recommended to never put cooked food outside if not consuming? Another doubt was regarding putting hot foods in the fridge. Its a no -no in my family. Is the idea prevailing nowadays to prevent extra fridge work??
I enjoyed this recipe, but it’s one of the only times I’ve watched one of Adam’s articles and thought “gosh, that’s complicated, I’d never actually do this!”. It isn’t objectively worse or better, but I always thought of Adam’s recipes as being optimized for “normal” people that can’t spend hours in the kitchen.
I have worked in cafe’s ..I grew up my dad owned a cafe.. raised kids and grandkids cooking so at 65 would think I know french toast..lol..I love your articles..learn something all the time . living alone now I hadn’t really felt like cooking for myself..you definitely have changed that..last night I even did a pasta recipe that sounded strange..fried pasta! I don’t even really like spaghetti and sauce…but the heat of the peppers.. texture of the pasta I was blown away..loved it.. can’t wait until my son comes back and we have a family dinner…he knows how to cook..same with his wife .. even gone of trips overseas for the cuisine but I’ll bet you he’s never seen anything like this..lol
This looks very delicious, but I will say that I usually use french toast to use up bread that’s old and stale. And it’s usually sourdough and it’s usually rock hard. So I soak it in the fridge…overnight. It seems a bit counterintuitive to buy bread specifically to make french toast with rather than using up your stale bread. Then again, I don’t like eating eggs so french toast is one of the only ways I’ll have them so…maybe I’m just weird.
Here in Brazil, we call french toast “Rabanadas”, its usually eaten only on christmas, the main difference is that we use Baguettes instead. two day old baguettes, cut into a two centimeter slices, the “custard” and frying are basically the same, we also sprikle sugar and cinammon after why the different name when we use french bread? no idea, but you should try it sometime, its more finger food, but its awsome =)
Here in Spain we have something similar called Torrijas (Spanish toast?), which you soak in milk before coating in the egg mixture, and serve with cinnamon on top. Theres even a kind of bread specifically made for torrijas which is very ‘spongy’ to absorb as much milk as possible (although you can use any bread, even baguette). I assume torrijas bread has a similar consistency to brioche.
This is very good to know. I grew up with my moms French toast and since I know she’ll never see this I’m okay with saying it was terrible. Floppy, wet pieces of white sandwich bread with what can almost be described as a thin coating of scrambled eggs. I’m glad I now know a way to make French toast that I’d be proud to serve.
Isn’t that just a different version of poor knights? just with less milk-egg-mix to go into the frying pan with the bread? If you would pour the rest of the mix over your toast while frying, that would be very much poor knights. Especially the second version with soaked bread. My family cooks something similar every easter sunday.
I can’t FIND Challah anymore cries I miss it from my childhood growing up in new england, and family in NYC would bring a loaf of that tasty bread. but just can’t find it out here in utah. my Father inlaw is a decent baker, he tried making it, and it was…pretty good, but WAY different in so many ways.
So I’ve never had crispy or crunchy french toast. we always use texas toast dont toast it or let it sit out just straight from the bag. and then the “custard” is just egg and a little milk and we put butter in the pan and toss each egg coated piece if bread into a cinnamon sugar mix and toss it in the pan. its always good and has a nice cooked egg texture but not in a bad way.
Now, I may not be ready to coat my french toast with breadcrumbs (which this is the first time I’ve heard of such a thing), but I’ll definitely dry out my bread and use more cream. On the other hand, I prefer to use whole cinnamon and nutmeg with the zester. If anything it fills the kitchen with the aroma of what you’re about to eat.
Traditionally, french toasts, aka Pain Perdu (lost bread) is a way to use the bread that got too dry to eat and would have been otherwise “lost”, hence the name. Modern versions are still made with leftover bread in households that forgot their bread for a bit too long, or with brioche for a special occasion. Restaurants in France almost always use brioche because it’s freakin delicious, and it’s always made on the spot, it’s not that common to see restaurants spend time drying up their bread/brioche in the oven or something, they just let it sit in open air for the day or the night before. I have never ever heard of any form of corn with that, so I am a bit surprised to hear it as being tradition. In fact, the tradition recipe you will get in most households and restaurants here don’t have crumbs at all, it’s just eggs and milk/cream, sometimes a bit of flour, but that’s it. Crumbs are an exceptional addition. Deep-fried Pain Perdu isn’t common at all, most places will just use a lightly oiled pan and maybe some butter, but I have never seen or ate it so far. Though I did see it once written on a restaurant’s menu, under “Pain Perdu” itself, so clearly people there expect that Pain Perdu to be pan-fried and deep-fried Pain Perdu is something else. Plus deep-frying overall isn’t that common in France, any kind of “traditional French recipe” that call for deep-frying is suspicious. So I don’t think corn and deep-frying are common in France at least. Putting the pain perdu from the pan to the oven isn’t that common in households, i think, but it is something you see more often in restaurants.
it might be a long shot but I’d love to see a article about celiac disease, if only to raise awareness (1 in 100 people are celiac, but only 1 in 20 of those people are diagnosed) I was diagnosed in 2015 and found your articles by looking for recipe’s that I can adjust myself, but alot of us would appreciate it
At home, we would always fry old bread in eggs so it doesn’t go to waste. Sometimes we’d put milk in the eggs to save some money, but the toast would come out better with just egg. I was incredibly surprised to find out that originally, this french recipe was supposed to be a dessert. After eating the simple version for years, I can’t get used to the sweet take.
Forget the soak overnite I do it right then and there, 8 times morr vanilla and cinnamon and add the cinnamon afterwards and egg is twice more then then the bread. Result inna french toast that looks more like an omelete then toast. I feel like he totally missed the point of french toast on this article. But to each their own. Dont add sugar. As the Sugar from Maple Syrup will take its place. Use the bastardized Vanilla, as True vanilla is super expesnive and you can barely barely taste vanilla, therefore I just dose the sht on vanilla to overcompensate lol.
The interesting thing about a french toast is that in Poland we generally think of bread soaked in egg and eaten as a savoury dish with ketchup and popular thing is to melt a cheese on top of a toast. And really until I started perusal more english speaking cooks on yt I didn’t even know some people eat it sweet. Kinda funny, entire country doing it different way (actually don’t know which countries do it that way also)
I love making french toast but I hate how cinnamon doesnt dissolve into the custard. My best guess is to separate any sugar used in two and have an outer coating of any spices or stir it into the crunch layer. I might try clarified butter but so far replacing a layer of regular house butter works just fine. Oven feels like an extra step but if you’re already doing rice krispies on it then why not bake some refrigerated batches.
Thank you for using salted butter like normal people have in their refrigerators. I get tired of recipes that call for unsalted butter then add salt. I get that different brands have slightly different amounts of salt, but I’m not going to keep unsalted butter around just to satisfy some recipe’s fickleness. I have never had a problem using salted butter and using less or no salt in the recipe.
so fun how even the name make you guys thinks it’s a fancy thing when if i translate litterally the french name of this it’s “lost bread” cause it’s what it is, it’s a way to use your too dry bread. if we french people don’t do that with bread we make “croutons” or breading those are good ways to use dry bread aswell but wont do well with american sweet bread of course