Make Ahead French Toast Recipe

There are Sunday mornings when only French toast will do – unfortunately, these French toast craving mornings sometimes coincide with Sunday mornings when you’d rather just linger in bed…

Well, never fear – with this recipe you can have your Sunday French toast without doing much more than popping your already prepared dish of at the ready soaked bread into the oven while you slowly ease into the day.

Make-ahead French toast is the salvation of the Sunday morning lazy-man.

And it’s easy too – not requiring much of you other than forethought and 5 minutes of effort the evening before.

And while it’s not exactly the same as the ready-sautéed stuff – it’s just as good, if a little bit different and makes a nice change of pace, in any case.

So this coming weekend, take a few minutes before heading off to sleep on Saturday to whip together a little egg and milk and to throw this down on some sliced bread for an overnight fridge soak sleepover. Come morning – you’ll be happy you did!

Make Ahead French Toast

• 1 loaf of Challah bread, cut into 1 inch slices. You can, if you must, use other types of bread here, but in truth, the Challah bread is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the French toast wars, and so you’ll never do as well as you will with the real stuff.
• 2 and ½ cups of milk
• 1 cup of half and half cream (or use ½ cup of heavy cream and up the milk by another ½ cup) - If you don't have cream, you can just use 3 and 1/2 cups of milk in total
  
• 4 eggs
• ¼ cup of sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• A little butter for the greasing of the casserole dish

1. Grab a large roasting dish or lasagna sized casserole dish and smear a little butter all over the bottom and sides
2. Arrange the challah bread in the pan – you’ll probably need to make it a couple of layers high
3. Whisk together the eggs, the milk, the cream, the sugar and the vanilla and when well combined, pour this evenly over the bread, pressing down to get the bread soaked evenly
4. Cover this with plastic wrap, and let sit in the fridge overnight.
5. In the morning, preheat your oven to 400 and when hot, remove the plastic wrap and toss in the oven to bake for about 40 minutes, or until it’s cooked through and golden brown. It will puff up, soufflé style as it bakes.

Serve, a la French toast, with maple syrup and good jam.