Pain perdu, “forgotten bread” or simply French toast is a sweet variant of Balkan “przhenica”. The French will not serve this dish for breakfast, but rather as a dessert, dusted with powdered sugar and with some jam. Preparation is very simple, just like home-made przhenica (i.e. bread slices coated in beaten egg and fried in shallow oil) except that they are served with sugar and cinnamon.
Slices of a day old, white toast bread.
100 g butter, at a room temperature
100 g berry jam
500 ml milk
1 vanilla stick, cut lengthwise
3 eggs, + 2 yolks
125 g + 2 tbsp AGRAGOLD sugar
boiling water
powdered milk
SOLIA STYLE oil for oiling the pan
Butter each slice of bread and cut it diagonally. Place the triangles in a large baking tray making sure the buttered side up. Grill in the preheated oven, on the rake closest to the heater, for 30-45 seconds.
Place toasted bread slices in a baking tray, 30×20 cm in size. Finally, evenly spread some berry jam in the pockets between every two or so slices.
Boil milk with a vanilla stick. Remove from the flame and let cool. As the milk cools, beat eggs, yolks and sugar to get a bright fluffy mix. Remove vanilla stick from the milk which has cooled off in the meantime, add milk to the egg-mix and whisk. Pour this mix over the bread slices you already toasted in the tray.
Heat the oven to 200°C. Place the dish with the toast slices into a deeper dish. Pour boiling hot water in the deeper dish so that it reaches half a dish the toast slices are in. Bake in the oven for some 5 minutes. Then use a metal spatula to press the bread slices down so that they soak in the egg-mix. Bake for 25 minutes more.
Carefully remove both trays from the oven and let stand for about 30 minutes. Next, take the tray with the toast out of the bigger tray, dust the dish with some powder sugar and serve warm.
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