Getting eggy

Last Sunday I took a break from my waffle journey and made some french toast instead. It turned out to be not too far really from my forays into waffles, as I was determined to make the eggiest french toast ever. I read up on some recipes, and decided to sort of try this recipe of Baked French Toast, off of Epicurious.com. Reviews and descriptions of the recipe described it as an extremely rich, custurdy, bread pudding sort of thing, but I wanted bread fried in eggs (who doesn't!) and I also wanted to amp up the spice, and cut down on the sugar (smother the bread in marmelade? really?) Anyway, with some sausages and fruit it turned out perfect: eggy spicy bread brightened up with citrus.


Halfway depleted pan of bread marinating in eggs. I added lots of orange zest and let the bread sit for half an hour in the mixture, turning the pieces occasionally to get them good and soppy.



I think my recipe went something sort of like this:
5 Pieces of a hearty rustic white bread (I used Grand Central's Como)
1 1/3 cup milk (approx)
3 egg yolks
1 egg with white
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tb cardamom
orange zest from 1.5 large oranges

Topping:
orange slices
maple syrup
fresh ginger

Mix all the liquid and spices. Cut bread in half and spread in deep dish and allow to soak in liquid for half an hour. I was worried I didn't have enough liquid and added some more milk (hence my "approx" above.) Turn bread slices occasionally to keep soaking. Fry up in butter.

I sliced up the oranges and grated tons of fresh ginger into them and let them sit for a while too. I added just a tiny bit of maple syrup to try to justify this as a breakfast, but it totally wasn't needed. The oranges on top of the bread added some extra nice sweet, spicy juiciness to the whole mess. Oh, and of course, you can just fry up those unused egg whites for some scrambled eggs. Lucky you; egg whites are a healthy choice! har har har