French Toast

Ingredients

* 8-12 slices brioche or high-quality white, wheat, raisin sandwich bread (whatever you have on hand or want to use)
* 2 tbsp butter, melted
* 1 cup milk
* 1 large egg
* 2 tbsp sugar
* 2 tsp vanilla extract
* 3/4 tsp cinnamon
* 1/4 tsp salt
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 200-F degrees and place a rack in the middle position. Place bread in a single layer on a wire rack over a baking sheet. Bake until the bread is slightly dry, approximately 10 - 15 minutes.
2. While bread is drying, whisk together the milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and salt in a bowl.
3. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and whisk it into the milk mixture. Whisk in the flour slowly and until batter is smooth. Pour batter into shallow dish (I use a Pyrex pie pan).
4. Soak pieces of bread in the batter for about 30 seconds per side. Take bread out of batter and allow excess to drip back into dish.
5. Cook on a hot griddle coated with cooking spray. Cook until French toast is golden brown on both sides, about 2-1/2 minutes per side.
6. Serve with syrup or butter and sugar. Enjoy!

Notes (September 2011)
We use this recipe with whatever bread we have on hand. Drying out the bread in the oven seems like a silly step, but you can do it while you are pulling together the batter, and it really does make a nice difference in the quality of the French toast you serve. It won't take your oven long to come up to 200, and then you can use your warmed oven to hold the finished French toast until you are ready to serve it.

Update March 2020: Our favorite bread to use is day old brioche from the quick sale rack at the grocery store.  Brioche is perfect, but you want it to be sightly dry, so getting it 50% off because it was made yesterday is perfect!  If they have it but I don't want to make French Toast that week, I still buy it, slice it at home and freeze it.  Then I can pull it out the night before I want to make it!