Notes: Hawaiian French Toast

17 May 2015

Prep

• A simple dinner after a long hike.
• This recipe popped up on Facebook recently so I thought I would try it.
• I am still looking for the best recipe/method for making french toast. I don't expect this is it, but I may learn some things. 
  
• The recipe uses King's Hawaiian bread. While the recipe calls for a round loaf we used a sandwich loaf. The slices were ¾-inches thick instead of 1-inch as in the recipe, but more uniform than I could cut them by hand.
• Rather than leave the bread out to get dry as in the recipe, I dried it out in the oven. I wasn't sure how many slices of toast the recipe would make, so I filled a rimmed baking sheet which was 8 slices. They were baked at 225° for 30 minutes, turning them over half way.
• Many years ago we used to eat King's Hawaiian Bread and we liked it, but we haven't had it for some time. I don't know exactly what it is but it would seem to be an enriched, sweetened bread. Since brioche is good for french toast, this should do well.
• I omitted the nutmeg (Diane doesn't like it).
• The bacon was cooked in water, initially, which keeps it tender and meatier.
• To go with the french toast we had bacon, fresh fruit salad (strawberry, pineapple, banana, blueberry, raspberry, orange), and mimosas.

Eat

• The french toast was good, not great. It was pretty sweet with ¼-cup sugar in the the batter plus maple syrup or jam topping.
• It had an odd texture in the center, kind of chewy rather than custardy. The bread is a little thin for french toast and it would be interesting to taste a slightly thicker version.
• There was only a little batter left over, maybe enough for one more slice, but 8 is a good number: 4 for dinner and 4 for leftovers.

Eat leftover

• The leftover slices of french toast were cooled then placed in individual sandwich bags and frozen.
• For breakfast: one slice is removed from the freezer and heated in the toaster on "frozen" mode and a setting of 6.  It makes for a good, quick breakfast with some juice and tea.