This Straightforward, Make-Forward French Toast Casserole Is the Greatest Strategy to Feed Your Household or a Crowd

Skilled cooks hate working brunch service. I don’t blame them—I personally wouldn’t wish to be churning out eggs, bacon, and pancakes for a ravenous, hungover crowd on a Saturday or Sunday morning. (As Anthony Bourdain famously wrote in his ebook Kitchen Confidential, “brunch is demoralizing to the intense line cook dinner.”)

Making brunch within the consolation of my house, nonetheless, is a wholly totally different situation. I really like feeding ravenous individuals—particularly in the event that they’re those I really like. Nonetheless, you’ll not discover me making eggs to order, nor will you discover me flipping pancakes one after the other. As an alternative when it is time to sit all the way down to eat, you’ll discover an already clear kitchen and a desk set with a baked French toast casserole simply contemporary out of the oven, served alongside bowls of contemporary berries, toasted nuts, and a jug of darkish amber maple syrup. 

That’s the great thing about a baked French toast casserole: You may soak the bread within the custard the evening earlier than, and within the morning, all that’s left to do is pop it within the oven. The spot-on baked French toast recipe we’re sharing right here comes from our Birmingham, Alabama-based check kitchen colleague Elizabeth Mervosh, who baked batches and batches of the casserole to land on a recipe for a young, custardy casserole you can also make forward. Learn on for her recipe, together with recommendations on tips on how to make the easiest baked French toast casserole.

The Greatest Bread for Baked French Toast Casserole

As our editorial director Daniel touched on in his quick-and-easy French toast recipe, French toast tastes finest not when it’s made with stale bread however quite when it is made with oven-dried bread: “There’s one thing about oven drying that dehydrates the bread whereas preserving its contemporary style. Plus, it tends to ship the perfect textures: tremendous crisp and toasty on the skin, yielding (however not mushy) inside.” Right here, we take a web page out of his ebook by oven drying the bread in a 250ºF (121ºC) oven and flipping it midway by means of, which ensures that every slice crisps evenly. We advocate utilizing brioche or challah, that are agency however tender sufficient to soak up the custard with out disintegrating. Keep away from crusty loaves, which take for much longer to hydrate and soften.

Do not Shy Away From the Vanilla and Spices

Vanilla extract, floor nutmeg, and cinnamon give this baked French toast casserole a subtly candy and heat spiced notice. Whereas that mix is scrumptious, it’s also possible to mess around with totally different spices and mix-ins to change up the flavour profile. Add a contact of orange zest for brightness, or give the casserole autumnal aptitude by incorporating half a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. You may even swirl apple butter or jam into the custard if you’d like one thing extra fruit-forward, or swap out the granulated sugar for gentle or darkish brown sugar, which is able to carry a nice molasses notice to the casserole. 

Dunk Your Bread within the Custard—Then Let It Sit

Many baked French toast casserole recipes have you ever pour custard over slices of bread in a baking dish, however with that methodology, we observed that the custard didn’t all the time take up evenly into the bread. The far more constant methodology? Dunking the toasted bread into the custard combination—simply as you’d for normal French toast—which ensures that each inch of the bread was soaked. After you dip the bread, you will lay it out within the baking dish, then pour the remaining egg combination over the sliced bread and let it sit within the fridge till nicely soaked, about an hour and a half. You may bake it instantly after that soak, however if you wish to make it forward, you possibly can let it sit within the fridge for as much as 12 hours earlier than baking it. 

Prime With Melted Butter and Cinnamon Sugar

As a result of the oven dries out the floor of the casserole because it bakes, we determined to offset a few of that dryness by brushing the cooked casserole with melted butter. We then prime the baked casserole with aromatic cinnamon sugar and broil it for a number of minutes, which produces a candy and pleasantly crunchy crust that contrasts properly with the tender, custardy casserole.