French Toast

Here's one way to liven up your bread -- FRENCH TOAST.

Serves  1
Prep Time  5 minutes
Cooking Time  5 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 slices bread (you can use any plain bread; for healthier versions use whole wheat or multi-grain bread)
• 1 pc chicken egg, beaten
• 100 ml milk (full cream, low-fat, nonfat, or soy milk)
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Salt (to taste)
• Sugar (to taste)
• Toppings (optional): syrup or fruit

Cooking Procedure:

1. Beat together egg, milk, salt, sugar, spices and vanilla.
2. Heat a lightly-oiled skillet over medium-high flame.
3. Dunk each slice of bread in egg mixture, soaking both sides. 
4. Place in pan, and cook on both sides until golden brown. 
5. Serve hot.
6. Top with syrup (maple, pineapple, chocolate, strawberry) and/or fruit (banana and strawberries are top bets).

It is said that French toast did not really come from France.  First mentions of this dish is in the Apicius, a Roman cookbook which dates way back to the 4th to 5th century. 

So how did it get the name French Toast? No one knows exactly, but there are speculations -- some nearer the truth than the others. One sensible explanation is that it was prepared by European medieval cooks. The dish went to being called as French Toast, Spanish Toast, German Toast, and the like. It got its name where it was cooked, nonetheless the recipe for all these toasts is the same. One interesting (but most likely fictional) story is that it took its name from its inventor -- Joseph French. Mr. French wasn't so keen into naming it that it became French Toast, instead of French's Toast as it should have been if this story was true.

People before, as much as possible, did not want to waste any food and this recipe was used to revive stale or old bread.  Logically, old bread will taste better if moistened with milk and egg, and heated in oil or butter.  Rich people would use white bread, cutting of the crust, while poor people prepare it with whole wheat bread and not even bothering to remove the crust. White bread then was more expensive than the whole wheat variety. Quite the opposite nowadays, huh?

French Toast is also called Eggy Bread, Gypsy Toast (as Thanksgiving food), Dwarf Toast (in parts of Cumbria in the UK), torriga (in Spain), pain perdu (in 15th-century English), and Poor Knights/arme ritter (in 14th-century German). 

There you have it. Enjoy! :-)