I grew up eating french toast once every week or two. Delicious stuff, and easy too. Some eggs, a little milk, dip the bread and cook like a pancake.
Then I got married, and my wife did the same thing but ruined it by adding cinnamon. Well, to each her own. We started dividing the egg stuff before she added the cinnamon to her mix.
One day I watched the Good Eats episode Toast Modern where AB goes through this complicated process to get some kind of "perfect" french toast. It sure didn't look worth the effort to me, so I promptly forgot all about it.
Then I visited New Orleans for a conference. The hotel I stayed at had complimentary breakfast (and not that lame cover-up people call "continental breakfast"). One day I ordered the french toast, unwittingly changing my life forever.
What they served was, as AB says, crispy on the outside and soft and creamy on the inside. It tasted less eggy than what I was used to. It was lightly dusted with powdered sugar before I put some syrup on, but I knew it went deeper than condiments. This was fundamentally different french toast to what I had been accustomed to. And I loved it. Truly incredible. More than anything else about that trip to New Orleans, I will remember the french toast.
Fast forward again, and I came across the same Good Eats episode. This time I paid closer attention and due respect to AB. Then I tried the recipe faithfully, but with mediocre results. First, the homemade artisan bread I was using had curled up while staling, making it very difficult to get a good browning in the pan. It also was quite holey. Second, I just didn't get much of a crisp. So again I chalked the recipe up to too complicated and not really worth it.
Yesterday I again had the hankering for some french toast like what I had in New Orleans. So I decided to follow AB's recipe again, but also to take some insurance out. I did some surfing and found that New Orleans french toast is apparently famous. Most recipes that seemed credible had the same basic structure: custard, pan-fry in butter, maybe put in the oven for the final crisping (I get the feeling some just use more butter or butter/oil mixture and fry it to crisp instead). So I grabbed french bread from the store (for reproduceability) and the rest of AB's ingredients. I mixed the custard and set out sliced bread the night before. In the morning, I followed his instructions to the T, except that I used the toaster oven and I included baking in the toaster oven in the pipeline (since I couldn't fit all 8 slices in at once anyway). It worked well, and wasn't too complicated.
The toaster oven really cuts down on the wait for preheat and the wasted heat. I actually set it to 400°F instead of the 375°F he recommended, and it worked well (5 minutes in). I may even toy with using the toast setting instead of the bake setting.
The rack and cookie sheet are, I believe, an unnecessary complication. If properly staled, the toast loses very little custard while resting, so i wouldn't worry about pooling. Instead I plan to use foil, or maybe just a cookie sheet, to cut down on the cleanup.
The french bread didn't curl, and tasted alright. As good as Albertson's french bread could be expected to taste. Next time I'll use my own artisan bread again (one with a bit more even crumb), and make sure to not lay it out in a way that bends the bread. I expect the results will be fantastic.
I feel like I'm working with the same principles that the hotel chef was working with. It is close to what I had, and I think perfection is within my grasp. What's more, it's no harder than the old way though it does take just a hair more planning and a less-common ingredient (half and half).