Recipe | Sweet and Salty French Toast
Decisionless brunch
This sweetened french toast with pancetta and a fried egg personifies brunch in every bite. Never again do you have to decide between pancakes OR eggs, you always have to have both. Live your truth.
Ingredients: (serves 2 hungover, starving people)
- 1/2 cup diced pancetta
- 4 eggs for frying, 2–3 more for the batter
- 6 slices of thick toast, preferably from a large rustic loaf
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Maple syrup
- pinch of salt and pepper
- butter
Directions:
Yes you have to prepare in advance with soaking the bread in batter the night before. Or at minimum a couple of hours. Mix 3 eggs with the milk, nutmeg and vanilla extract. Cut the toast and arrange in a deep cookie sheet or lasagna pan in one layer. Pour batter mixture over bread and let soak up in the refrigerator over night. All of the mix will be soaked up instantly but should be very wet, if it’s dry make a little more mix or just pour a little more milk. For the love of god please do not use non-fat milk.
Heat oven to 300 degrees.
Fry up the pancetta. You can put the chunks into a medium-high heat pan dry, the fat will render off immediately. Cook until it it’s crispy; spoon out the chunks leaving the fat in the pan. The perfect, salty, magic fat. With the pan on the same heat, add in the soaking bread. If you don’t have a big griddle, a frying pan is fine, you’ll just have to work in batches.
Cook toast until light brown on both sides. Once you reach the second side you may need to add a little butter. When you get to the second batch in the pan, you’ll definitely need to add butter to the pan. It needs fat to cook, otherwise it will just burn.
Transfer the first batch of cooked toast to an over safe serving platter, and then pour a few spoonfuls of maple syrup over the toast. It’s important to put just exactly enough syrup so its soaks in and gets nice and sweet — you don’t want it swimming in it. Put them in the oven to stay warm and get started with the next batch.
Finish up the french toast, adding to the oven and drizzling in syrup. Then with the same pan fry up some eggs. Plate as pictured, sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper over the eggs.
