FOOD NEWS
The Reason French Toast Always Tastes Better At A Restaurant
By Nick Johnson
Although French toast is simple to make at home, it always tastes better at a restaurant because the kitchen uses better bread and prepares it properly for the best result.
A large part of the process happens before cooking. Restaurants often use unsliced loaves to cut each slice to a thickness of between ½ to 1 inch to soak up more custard.
French toast made with brioche bread is softer and sweeter than sandwich bread. A dense baguette results in a gooier texture, as does challah bread, but with less sweetness.
Chefs often use stale bread for French toast. It's a version of pain perdu — a delicious dish made out of bread that would have been trash, translating to "lost bread."
At home, if you don't have stale bread, you can toast it before soaking it. This makes the slices more absorptive, which is an obvious hack that many home cooks may neglect.
When preparing the custard made of eggs and milk, restaurants likely use whole-fat for a rich consistency. They may add a splash of cream, but this can oversaturate fresh bread.
Restaurant chefs usually soak the stale bread in the custard for up to five minutes to allow more delicious dairy to be absorbed. Using fresh, soft bread would become too mushy.