Baked French Toast

By nanapuddin

Ingredients

• FOR THE FRENCH TOAST:
• 1 loaf Crusty Sourdough Or French Bread
• 8 whole Eggs
• 2 cups Whole Milk
• 1/2 cup Whipping (heavy) Cream
• 3/4 cups Sugar
• 2 Tablespoons Vanilla Extract
• FOR THE TOPPING:
• 1/2 cup All-purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup Firmly Packed Brown Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 1 pinch Nutmeg - Optional
• 1 stick Cold Butter, Cut Into Pieces
• Fresh Fruit (optional)

Details

Servings 12
Preparation time 15mins
Cooking time 75mins
Adapted from thepioneerwoman.com

Preparation

Step 1

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This is a scrumptious make-ahead breakfast casserole that’s so easy to prepare, it should be illegal. Leave it plain as the recipe dictates, or throw in blueberries or apple chunks to give it a little more dimension. And what I love about this dish is that you can decrease the cooking time a bit in order to result in a more moist bread pudding-like dish…or bake it a little longer to make the final product more crispy and “done.”

Pour in the milk and the half-and-half.

Add vanilla…

And whisk it all together. Set this aside for a minute.

Then—you guessed it—just pour the egg/milk mixture all over the top.

You can also make the topping ahead of time. Throw together flour, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon. You can also toss in some nutmeg, which makes it extra delicious.

Stir the mixture together with a fork…

Use a pastry cutter to mix it all together. Keep going until it’s all mixed up and the butter has been broken down to tiny pebbles.

Sprinkle the crumbly mixture all over the top.

Oh! And if you’re not the sister of someone whose head swells up when she eats even the tiniest particle of tree nut, you can certainly add finely chopped pecans to the crumb mixture on top. I’m just not in the habit of using nuts because of my sister’s little…uh…”problem.”

You will love this, guys. And you can add blueberries, apple chunks, peaches…whatever kind of fruit you’d like. Just sprinkle it over the soaked bread before you add the crumb topping.

In a medium sized bowl mix together eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla. Pour evenly over the bread. Cover tightly and store in the fridge for several hours or overnight.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Add nutmeg if desired. Add butter pieces and cut them into the dry mixture until mixture resembles fine pebbles. Store in a Ziploc in the fridge.

When you're ready to bake the casserole, preheat oven to 350 F. Remove casserole from the fridge and sprinkle crumb mixture over the top. (If you're using fruit, sprinkle on before the crumb mixture.) Bake for 45 minutes for a softer, more bread pudding texture. Bake 1 hour or more for a firmer, less liquid texture.

oh my! Now I just need someone to make it for me!

I don’t know about Ree, but I bake it uncovered. I use stale croissants. I tear them up and let them sit out all night or if they’re still not stale I toast them in the oven. I’ve found the bread needs to be stale for it to absorb the egg mix properly. It’s utterly delicious and it wows everyone I’ve made it for. I recently had dental surgery and could only eat soft food. I made myself a pan and ate the who thing, (minus the pecan topping) — over several days! Gulp.

Just checking to make sure I didn’t miss something….

Will add this to my to try list.

I was just looking up the correct way to make cinnamon toast and here this is!

Yummm – I am starving and since I’m at work, I cannot make these. This is torture!!

Where monkey bread and french toast meet! I add raisins usually and plenty of warmed maple syrup, strawberry jam and whipped cream. So good!

I just had some french toast and this makes me want more…

And here I was thinking that I’d hafta throw that extra loaf of texas toast out to the birds because I couldn’t think of anything to make with it. Good job, my birds are gonna starve because of you.

“When you’re ready to bake the casserole, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove casserole from oven and sprinkle crumb mixture over the top.”

All I can say is WOW! This has just been added to my “to do” list.

Oh my goodness….. this looks so yummy. Can’t wait to make it for when my in laws come in town.

First you try to kill me one morning with that Cinnamon Toast tutorial and now this! Have you no shame woman! How can I eat my dry whole wheat english muffin with egg beaters looking at this scrumptious, awesomeness! At least you had the decency not to make me read this while my kids were standing over me with their mouths watering. Now I can wait until the weekend.

This sound delicious. I make a baked french toast that is really good too. I might have to try this one:)

Looks delicious! Would have been a fantastic addition to our Mother’s Day Brunch….next year!

Oh just the idea of adding apples to that makes my head swoon….

OMG. Are you serious about this? I want to go home and make this right now!!!

Oh my! Not only am I going to make this today but my kindergartener was so intrigued by the pictures that she came for a look and started to read the blog by herself! Ha! Some kids start reading with books and my starts with a recipe! woo hoo!

And I love pastry cutters – something about them just makes me feel all warm and tingly and take me back to baking with my grammy when I was little.

Looks amazing! I used to make a similar sinful breakfast casserole (I made little mini cream cheese sandwiches with the bread before soaking in all that good cream and eggs). But my family asked me to stop for fear of heart attack!

Just to let you all know – if you want to make something great with peanut butter and chocolate check out the giveaway at my site.

The thoughts of this with fresh peaches later in the season is making me drool. And of course, topped with fresh peaches with maybe some maple syrup (the real stuff out of New England) mixed up.

I can’t wait to make it! It looks delicious!

Mmmmmmm….. I can just imagine how yummy this smells coming right from the oven. I’m adding crusty bread to my grocery list so I make this up tonight for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Yummy. Hope you have everything for this week pre-set to appear for us addicts. You ENJOY your vacation and stay away from your computer…

This being Texas, I’d have to add some local pecans into the topping. Otherwise…it looks really, really, good!

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