Button Up Your Overtoast

I think French toast must be the ideal breakfast comfort food --  simple, classic, and delicious.  It is not a new idea at all.  People have always looked for ways to use up food that would otherwise go to waste, and the practice of soaking old bread in milk and/or eggs and then frying it in oil goes back at least to ancient Rome.  An old French term for it, in fact, was pain a la Romaine, "Roman bread."  Nowadays the French (and a growing number of pretentious Americans) call it pain perdu, which means "lost bread."  Maybe pain recyclé would be more appropriate.

I always thought we called it French toast because it was French fried, although I think that technique really requires complete immersion in oil.  The British call it eggy bread or gypsy toast (I really like that name), and various other places around the world call it things which in their language translate to French toast, egg bread, egg toast, or fried bread.  In several countries its name, in the vernacular, means "poor knights," which apparently has something to do with lower-level soldiers only getting lowly French toast for dessert.  Another odd name comes from the Czech Republic, my ancestral home, where they call it chleba v kožíšku, "bread in a little coat."

Bread choices vary from place to place and to individual taste, although plain old white bread is favored by most.  I've heard of people using croissants for French toast.  I had never done that, but this morning, seeing these two croissants on the kitchen counter that were already four days old, I thought I might as well give it a try.  These croissants were already pretty hard, so I didn't get my hopes up.

I cut them lengthwise and soaked each half in a blend of egg and milk with a little sugar, cinnamon and vanilla.  I fried them in butter, and then I ate them, and I have only one thing to say:  YUM!