Each year on November 28th, people across the United States enjoy National French Toast Day.
There’s a blend that just makes our morning fantastic, and it’s a blending of eggs, milk, and cinnamon with bread dipped in. There’s something about the savory-sweet smell of it, and the anticipation of having it painted with butter and drizzled with syrup, with a side of breakfast sausage and a tall glass of orange juice that’ll get us out of bed on even the worst of days. French Toast Day is honors this amazing breakfast delight and encourages you to enjoy it for breakfast with a few friends.
The breakfast favorite French toast goes by many names depending on where it’s being served up – eggy bread, German toast, poor knights’ pudding, Bombay toast – but it’s always made of the same key ingredients. Egg, milk – or cream – and bread. This delicious sweet snack is often served with sugar or syrup and fruit and consists of bread slices fried in a mixture of milk and egg. In France, its name is ‘pain perdu’, which literally means ‘lost bread’, because it would often be made with stale or old bread.
Although we tend to call it French Bread, the dish isn’t known to have come from France. Some ancient Latin recipes from the 4th-century mention soaking bread in milk before frying, and in fourteenth Century Germany the term ‘poor knights’ pudding’ was coined for the sweet treat because it was seen as an affordable meal for those without too much money to spend. Today, it’s eaten across the world as a breakfast meal or a sweet snack.
In Italy, there’s a savory version, called ‘mozzarella en carrozza’, which sees the egg-soaked bread sandwiching slices of mozzarella cheese before it is fried. Its name literally means ‘mozzarella in a carriage’. So you can have eggy bread for your main meal, and your pudding!
5 THINGS WE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT FRENCH TOAST
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It’s got a bunch of names
French toast is also known as eggy bread, German toast, poor knights, and torrija.
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It’s not “French toast” in France
In France, it’s called “pain perdu,” which means “lost bread.”
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It’s not even French
The recipe is first found in Roman documents from the fourth or fifth century BC.
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PB&What?
In Hong Kong teahouses, “Western toast” is often filled with peanut butter or jam.
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Not just for breakfast anymore
Americans like it for breakfast, but other countries and cultures eat it at other times of the day.
