Vanilla-Flecked French Toast
from 4/4/09 Fork You Live
4 slices of thickly sliced white bread or sourdough
3 eggs
1/2 cup of milk
splash of cream
1/2 vanilla bean
2 tablespoons butter
If your bread is fresh, spread it out on a cookie sheet for at least an hour prior to making french toast. This will allow it to dry out a bit and it will absorb the custard mixture better.
In a shallow bowl, whisk the eggs, milk and cream together. Split the vanilla bean in half and scrape the seeds out from inside of it (if you don’t have a vanilla bean, substitute 1-2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Amount depends on your affinity for vanilla).
Heat a griddle to medium-high temperature.
Saturate the bread slices in the custard mixture, removing them from the pan once they’re soaked through. If the bread is tough, use the tines of a fork to macerate the bread in order to make it more sponge-like.
When the pan is hot and the bread is soaked, quickly butter it (so that the butter doesn’t burn) and lay the slices of future french toast down to cook. Adjust the temperature, so that it isn’t too hot. You need to cook at a medium-ish heat level, so that the outside of the toast doesn’t burn before the interior is cooked.
Cook 3-4 minutes on the first side and then 1-2 minutes on the second. This recipe can be infinitely expanded, depending on how many people you have to feed.
Serve the french toast with butter, maple syrup and homemade berry compote.
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