Challah French Toast

Growing up, it was customary for us to have Friday night Shabbat dinner at home as often as possible.  One of the best parts of Shabbat dinner is getting to eat challah - the traditional Jewish braided egg bread.  One of these days I will bake homemade challah and write about that - it really is wonderful to have the smell of fresh-braked bread permeate your home, and this is a lot of fun to make, but that is not what this post is about.  The next best thing to baking challah is turning the challah leftover into french toast in the morning.  For many years I tried to cook this through in the frying pan on the stove top, but have recently realized that it is much easier to have a perfect brown on the bread and a fully cooked through piece of french toast when you finish it in the oven - no more burnt bread to make sure you aren't eating raw egg.

Challah French Toast


Here are the ingredients to make 4 slices of french toast.  It ought to scale up proportionately to the number of slices that you are going to use.  There were only three of us, so I didn't want to make any more...

4 slices challah, 1/2" thick 
2 eggs
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. cinnamon
1 T sugar
2 T milk (we use 1 %)
1 T butter

0.  Preheat oven to 375 °F.
1.  Mix eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, and milk in a bowl.
2.  Soak bread in egg mixture, turning to coat as necessary.

 3.  Heat butter over medium-high heat in frying pan.  Brown both sides of the eggy challah slices - since we are going to finish the french toast in the oven you do not need to worry about ensuring it is cooked all the way through.

4.  Move browned french toast slices to a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  If you are making more slices than your frying pan can accomodate, fry the next batch(es) as well - there is plenty of room on the baking sheet since the slices do not need to be spaced apart from one another.

5.  Bake at 375 °F for 10 minutes.

  
6.  Serve with maple syrup & fruit for a satisfying, sweet breakfast.