Clean Eating Blueberry French Toast Casserole Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you make French toast not fall apart? ›

Bread: The secret to the best French toast is thick and stale bread! Day-old bread soaks up the custard beautifully and gets the perfect texture, while fresh bread breaks down and becomes soggy. I love Brioche, French bread, rustic Italian bread, and Challah.

Whatever you decide on, the ratio of liquid to egg will still be about ¼ cup liquid to one egg, and one egg per two slices of bread. So, if you want to make four slices of French toast, you would need four slices of bread, two eggs, and ½ cup milk.

For a solid French toast, aim for sturdy bread with a uniform texture and a soft crust. Hearty sandwich bread, brioche, challah, and shokupan (Japanese milk bread) are all great choices.

Covering a casserole (whether with a lid or with aluminum foil) is important because it helps keep moisture and heat inside the baking dish. This encourages even baking throughout, ensuring that noodles come out perfectly al dente and cheese melts uniformly.

The secret ingredient in this fluffy French toast recipe: all-purpose flour! Flour binds the liquids together, which creates a more traditional “batter” and helps prevent soggy results. This extra ingredient ensures the French toast is crispy on the outside, but soft and fluffy on the inside.

Given how much bread absorbs egg, you probably want to cook French toast in a non-stick pan. Standard pans might give you the chance to develop a more flavorful color during cooking, but spending 10 minutes scrubbing off egg glued to a pan isn't fun.

As you cook the French toast, bits of that nutty brown-butter flavor slowly develop — much slower than they would if you cooked with just butter alone — so the the French toast has time to cook evenly without burning. A neutral oil, like canola, is the way to go since it won't disrupt the flavor of the butter.

Vanilla and cinnamon.

Strictly technically speaking, these are optional, but French toast without vanilla and cinnamon just isn't nearly as good! A splash of almond extract or a pinch of nutmeg would also work here, if you have a more adventurous palate.

Ideally, the bread should be slightly stale. A drier bread will soak up all the custard. Bread can be left out with the wrapper open the day before cooking. If you find yourself in a pinch, dry your bread slices in a 275°F oven for 10 minutes before soaking them in the custard.

If the balance is off and you include too many eggs or not enough milk, the finished French toast will have a scrambled egg-like flavor. When scaling this recipe up or down, keep in mind that you need 1/4 cup of milk for every egg.

What happens if you soak French toast too long? ›

Leaving the bread in the egg mixture for too long is another route to soggy French toast.

Using thin, poor quality bread or bread that is too fresh (day old bread really works best!), soaking for too long, or using too high of heat can all lead to soggy toast.

Attempting to use fresh, soft slices of bread may result in your toast falling apart before it even reaches the plate. One will find that this fancy bread is made even better with various toppings.

Aim for medium-low heat so that the inside can cook and the outside will still get golden-brown and nicely caramelized. Follow this tip: Heat your griddle or frying pan to medium-low before cooking the French toast so it's perfectly cooked on both the outside and inside.