Pain perdu

Lost bread, French toast.

This is another example of the brilliance of French cooks making use of stale bread. It does not work with fresh bread. What happens when bread is fresh is the slices become coated with egg mixture and fry as egg coated bread. That is not what you want.

Pain perdu is a fried variation of bread pudding. The dry crumb of stale bread absorbs liquid egg like a sponge. It takes a bit of time. Once soaked it cannot be handled as a piece of bread anymore because it becomes too wet, too saturated and tends to fall apart. That is what you want. When gently lifted by spatula onto a heated pan with butter and fried on heat low enough to allow the center to cook before the outside browns then the whole thing will puff up like a soufflé.

The wetter, the better.

The egg mixture can be flavored various ways, here, cream, sugar, and cinnamon with a touch of salt. But anything you like will work, for example, vanilla, berry juice, mint, anything.

Powdered sugar on top with maple syrup. Not maple-flavored syrup.