Pain Perdu

In case you were worried, this blog entry title doesn't reference any kind of suffering or physical affliction. Pain is French for bread, and pain perdu is what we call French toast. French toast is an American breakfast-food staple, and yet I would bet most people don't know anything about its origin or why we call it French toast.

The source of this yummy brunch fodder is rooted in the French bread culture: specifically, one in which people purchase fresh bread every day. Without preservatives, bread gets stale very quickly. So stale you could use it as a baseball bat, or some kind of club. I recently encountered this when I purchased a baguette complete (whole-grain baguette) on Friday after I got back from my stage (a training seminar, in this case held for all of the primary school English assistants).

Purchasing bread in the late-afternoon/evening is always a bit of a risk, because if it was baked at 4 o'clock that morning, it might already be a little tough. That was the case here... so I anticipated that by the next day, or certainly by Sunday, my teeth would be in danger. Luckily, the French have already come up with a way to resolve this problem: pain perdu (literally 'lost bread'). Dipping the stale bread in the egg-milk mixture loosens up those tough starch fibers and saves that which was once inedible. This fits quite nicely into the French mentality of avoiding any kind of waste while cooking (and I prefer this incarnation of frugality to, say, eating brains or tongue).

So today I used the French solution to my stale bread conundrum, and made French toast! I got back from my 3-hour horseback riding stage at the Ecuries Chateau-Galland around 12:30pm and whipped up two eggs and some milk, added a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg, dipped the three slices of rock-hard bread in said mixture, then toasted them in a frying pan. Slathered on some Nutella and topped the bread with one sliced banana  -- yum! Plus I happened to have some maple syrup left over from a recipe I made a few weeks ago, so I drizzled that on top. Probably not my healthiest lunch ever, but hey, at least I'm trying to be authentic :-)