French toast and bacon (and lettuce and tomato)
Mmm, custardy bread chonks with crisp porkos
Almost every weekend for the last three-plus years, I've made the same brunch for Kåre and me: French toast with a side of bacon, as well as fried tomato and iceberg lettuce because B doesn't feel complete to me without the LT. Over the years my thoughts about this dish have gone something like this:
First year: Mmmm, French toast and bacon!
Second year: What do you know, I'm still making French toast and bacon! [chuckle]
Third year: What do you know, I'm still making French toast and bacon. [opposite of a chuckle]
Turns out if you eat something over a hundred times, you might get sick of it. So I occasionally tried making other brunch/breakfast food during the weekends. But nearly every time I did, I was left thinking I would've rather eaten French toast and bacon.
And so in my fourth year of French toasting, I've welcomed French toast as a staple of my weekly routine. It gives me two fewer meals to plan for, which is a big help during weekend mornings when a very awake one-year-old is swatting a far less awake me in the face. In pre-baby times, I might have spent those mornings wondering if I should make French toast for the bajillionth time. Now I spend those mornings knowing I'll make French toast for the bajillionth time, leaving me to wonder how long I can ignore Tilda as she pummels me with her lil'-but-surprisingly-strong baby hands.
Notes:
For these newsletters, I usually just link to outside recipes and share my notes, but this time I wrote out a recipe since I mashed a few recipes together and I wanted to show my workflow for this dish to a degree of thoroughness that no one has ever asked me for. I still have a bunch of notes though. Here we gooooo:
The sheet pan bacon technique is from Alexandra Cooks. You can also just fry your bacon in the same pan you plan to cook your French toast in, but I find the oven method easier as it frees up my brain to prep other parts of the meal. Your oven will get splattered with bacon fat, though.
I bake my own white bread adapted from Kitchen Princess Bamboo's shokupan recipe using a 1.5斤 lidded loaf pan, resulting in slices that are about 10 x 10.5 x 1 cm. (How I store my bread: After the loaves cool, I slice them, stick them in plastic bags, and freeze them. When it's bread-o-clock, I only take out as many slices as I need and I defrost them in the microwave or toaster.) I use three slices for me and Kåre (one for me, two for him) and I cut each slice in half so I can fit them all into my frying pan at the same time.
The French toast recipe is adapted from Serious Eats's Quick and Easy French toast recipe. I adapted the amount of egg goop / custard to fit my type and amount of bread. You may need to use more or less depending on your type of bread and how much you wanna eat in one meal.
Robyn's not-mindblowing-but-easy-to-make French toast and bacon that she eats nearly every weekend because it's easier than learning how to make something new
Serves 2 (if I make this on a Saturday, I usually double the egg goop and save half for the next day)
Ingredients
5 slices bacon (or more/less depending on how much bacon you want)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
1/8 teaspoon (or more) each ground cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and/or nutmeg (aka just use whatever spices you want. Lately I've been doing 1/4 tsp cinnamon + 1/8 tsp ground cardamom + 1/8 tsp ground cloves.)
2 large eggs
150 ml whole milk
3 slices white bread
1 tomato
2-4 leaves iceberg lettuce
Powdered sugar, for dusting
Steps
Preheat the oven to 225°C / 425°F. On a baking sheet (I use a quarter-sheet pan), lay down the bacon slices nice ‘n flat.
While oven is preheating, prepare your egg goop / custard. In a small bowl, whisk together the sugar, spices, and salt. Crack in the eggs and whisk together. Pour in the milk and whisk until fully incorporated.
Cut slices of bread in half and toast them. Place toasted bread in a container that can fit the bread in a single layer (I use a small baking pan). This will be used later to soak the bread in the egg goop.
When oven is fully heated, stick in the bacon pan and bake for 13-15 minutes. My bacon takes about 13 minutes, but timing depends on thickness and dryness of the bacon, so take a peek around the 12 min mark to see how it’s doing. Leave it in until it's the doneness you want.
While the bacon is cooking, prep other ingredients. If the tomato is small, slice it in half. If the tomato is a BIG BOI, slice it into quarters (save two quarters for the next meal if you want). Set tomato pieces aside. Wash the lettuce, cut/tear it into the pieces you want, and divide it between two plates.
When the bacon is done, remove the pan from the oven and transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate (I pry the bacon off the pan with a fork). Pour the rendered bacon fat into the frying pan you're going to use to cook your French toast. The bottom of the pan should be covered in an even layer of fat. If it doesn't look like enough, add some vegetable oil (I always have to add more oil).
Heat the pan over medium heat until the fat is shimmering. Add the tomato chunks cut-side down.
While the tomato chunks are frying, pour the egg goop into the pan/plate/whatever with the toasted bread and soak for 3 minutes. After the time is up, flip the tomato chunks to fry the other side, and flip the bread to soak for another 3 minutes. Transfer fried tomato chunks to the plates with lettuce. (Three minutes isn't a magic number. Your bread might take longer to soak. Or shorter. Also, you don't have to fry your tomato. I just prefer it that way.)
Place soaked bread in the frying pan (beware of splattering fat). Fry for 3 minutes, then flip each piece over, adjusting heat if the toast looks too dark. Fry for another 3 minutes.
Transfer French toast to plates. Dust with powdered sugar. (For easily dusting things with powdered sugar, I use a tea strainer that I leave in my package of powdered sugar at all times. Thanks to Melissa for the tip!) Top with bacon strips. Serve with maple syrup or butter or whatever.
More photos because embedding photos in a numbered list doesn't really work:
