Both my husband (who shall henceforth be known as “drummer guy”) grew up in large working class families. There was many a time during our formative years, when we ate breakfast for dinner. Pancakes, sausage, eggs all were frequent flyers on both our dining room tables. And both of us have a special fondness for French toast, which we both ate for Sunday breakfast and the occasional dinner.
French toast was one of the first things I learned to make as a child. All you needed was bread, eggs and a splash of milk to have something that slathered in syrup was warm and wonderful to consume. Even at six, I didn’t need a written recipe for this one. For this reason, I was surprised to see a French Toast recipe in the notebook.
This recipe is a bit of a twist and I can see why my mom cut it out of the newspaper. It uses Challah bread and you actually put it together the night before. Since my daughter had an early shift Sunday morning, this sounded like a perfect dish to send he!r on her way to gainful employment on a full and happy stomach.
My Mom cut out the actual title of the dish, so we’ll just call this one.
French Toast in the Oven
1/2 cup of melted butter
1/3 cup of orange juice
1 TB of honey
4 eggs
8 slices of Challah bread, sliced at 1″ thick
Pour melted butter in a 15 x 10″ pan to cover bottom completely.
In a large bowl combine eggs, orange juice and honey. Dip the bread slices in the egg mixture and place in a single layer in the pan. Cover the pan and put in the refrigerator up to 24 hours, but at least overnight.
The next day, heat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the french toast for 8 – 10 minutes a side, and remove when lightly browned on both sides.
(Note: there is also a fairly gross sounding syrup recipe which I am omitting. It was basically butter, OJ, lemon juice and brown sugar. Not really appealing sounding to anyone in the family, so it was nixed)
REVIEW
This dish was amazing! Easy enough to put together for a workday breakfast, it was upscale enough to serve at a brunch. I slathered mine in raspberries and a drizzle of homemade strawberry syrup. The challah bread makes a nice puffy French Toast bread that still stands up to a variety of toppings. The addition of orange juice adds a very subtle citrus taste as well.
As my daughter stated “two thumbs up!” 10/10 is the final score here!
skullwoman 