Are you ready for a Dad-style lecture on the properties of properly prepared Pain Perdu?
Unlike French Horns, French Toast is actually a true name. Sure, the French have been know to toast their bread the German way, dried out in an oven, toaster or conventional, and served with some form of mashed fruit, but the French way of toasting things actually involves the egg mixture and the cinnamon and the powdered sugar. Yes, folks, for once the translators got it right. And the true nature of French toast is directly related to the bread that they eat. The most common breads in France are the Pain de campagne, or Country Bread, and its smaller, more familiar cousin, the Baguette. If you have ever eaten a true chunk of either, you would immediately know why throwing the bread in the oven for toasting is out of the question. Both are, by nature, already very crunchy on the outside, and very squishy on the inside. I used to love watching little kids eat a baguette, because they would sit and scoop the soft insides out with their fingers , creating a hole through the middle as far as they could reach, and then stuff the hole with some fabulous cheese and crunch through the crust, creating a crumbly mess, but relishing every bite. I ate my bread like this when in the privacy of my apartment (Sisters do have to maintain some level of propriety) and saw the merit and blessing of becoming like a little child. But to simply toss that crunchy crust into an oven would spell petrified disaster! You would break teeth, and since most Europeans don't have much dental coverage, a better way of toasting had to be discovered.
Enter the restaurants and bakeries. The French are not capitalists. Even a brief visit to the countryside will reveal that most bakeries and restaurants close for lunch. What is a quandry for most Americans holds a simple response for the French. People that work in bakeries and restaurants have to go home and eat with their families too. And if you can throw the capitalist voice out of your head for a moment, and understand that you are not in fact on the earth to make money, you would see the logic. Of course it's more important for people to go home and have lunch with their families. The children come home from school for lunch, why shouldn't grown ups meet them there? Of course, now the bakeries and restaurants have to figure out how to stay afloat without the, uh, capital from the lunch rush. And they have all this leftover bread. And French bread, even a few hours old, no longer holds the glorious properties I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The Crust goes softish, but is too chewy to be squishy, and the inside absorbs some of the crunch from the crust and goes sort of elastic-y as well. What should a restaurant or bakery do with all that leftover bread?
Don't think for a moment that the head chef is becoming a capitalist, no. Their every goal is to create a masterpiece of flavor. They pride themselves on being artists, and an artist can create from the medium they have readily at hand. And a French chef knows that where you are faced with beginning a creation, you should start where all of the best French creations start. With the Egg. (and I answer with all the fervor of my heart, which came first, the chicken or the egg?, it was the egg. It all begins with an egg. The egg was prominent in French kitchens long before King Louis XIV declared that every household had to have chicken for dinner on Sundays because he liked it.)
So what if you take this egg, and you create a sort of a batter with it, in order to re-cook the bread and restore some edible texture to it? You would need to blend the egg with a little milk to loosen it up, and then you would want to add some of your own signature flavors to it. Vanilla is particularly comforting. And cinnamon, Every kitchen smells better when there is cinnamon in the mix. Whisk it all together, and soak that nasty Lost Bread, Pain Perdu, in it, let it absorb the egg mixture and soften back up again, then put it back in the oven, and turn it halfway through cook time so as to redistribute its new crust evenly. Mmmm.... doesn't the house smell great? Lets make it pretty when we serve it, by sprinkling powdered sugar on the top and offering some confiture on the side... in a cute little mini cup!
Of course, every French chef will have their own variation on the theme. Once word gets out that you can re-use old bread with just a few eggs and some milk, everyone will want in on the market... err, art.
The misconception some Americans have about the French is that they want to own their ideas. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. Sure, the French want you to acknowledge the true origins of a thing, but they are artists in their hearts, and if you want to use the foundations they have given you in order to create and express your own masterpiece, you are welcome to it. The French give us the stale bread, the egg, and permission to learn and grow and experiment.
So when you try it, perhaps you could use egg and some orange zest, maybe a little orange juice instead of milk. I would still add some vanilla to the orange egg mix, but I am a little nuts for vanilla flavoring. And cinnamon, although I might add some nutmeg and ground cloves with the orange as well. And don't bother putting the jam on the side this time. Just the powdered sugar with the Pain Perdu a l'orange. Or there is the lovely chocolate variation, with a little nutella and bananas to top it off. Of course, if you return to the cinnamon and vanilla approach, you can vary the topping in a glorious way. I have found that a balance of maple syrup and peach spice jam makes me feel like I am 6 years old, and sitting on the bar stools at the counter in the Michigan house. I can see cinnamon speckled syrup dribbling onto the green shag carpet. How do you get peach jam and maple syrup out of green shag carpet?
