![]() It is a hearty and easy breakfast before a day in the saddle or on the tractor. This simple morning recipe is delicious and easy cooked on the kitchen stove or in a cast iron skillet around the campfire. To me, this dish is a wonderful Louisiana tradition that translates into a hearty Western breakfast when bacon and eggs are added to the meal. Adjustments in temperature and cook time may need to be made for altitude and wind as well as size of oven. For a 350 degree oven, place 17 coals on top and 8 coals on bottom (for a 12 inch oven). The trick with the Dutch oven over coals is to get the temperature right. This recipe is simple in the kitchen but can easily be converted to Dutch oven for outdoor cooking on campouts. Some mornings I love the simplicity of the pain perdu alone but if I am entertaining and we have a big day planned of hiking in the mountains or working around the ratchette, I will add the heartiness of a full, big breakfast. This dish is delicious alone but for a heartier breakfast, serve it with bacon or other breakfast meat and even scrambled eggs. To me, it is always worth paying for quality to produce the best results.Ī sprinkling of fresh blueberries or raspberries on top is not a bad thing. My preferred syrup is 100% Grade A, amber colored, from Canada or Vermont. Use real maple syrup the higher the quality, the more you will find it worth it. In fact, a little runny custard in the middle is not a bad thing.Īfter it comes out of the oven, sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar and a generous amount of maple syrup. Bake at 350 degrees uncovered about 30 minutes or until knife inserted into middle comes out clean. I often make a small one for myself for breakfast and a place a larger one into the frig to serve to overnight guests the next morning for breakfast. This dish can be cooked right away or put into the refrigerator overnight. In fact, you can fill the dishes to the top and the custard will puff up during cooking almost like a soufflé. Pour the custard over the bread into small individual casserole dishes or one large casserole dish, making sure all bread is covered by the custard mixture. (Spending money on Madagascar Vanilla Bean Paste is well worth it for the flavor bonus.) Add several teaspoons of cinnamon powder again the quality and freshness of this ingredient enhance the flavor. “Season” with a generous teaspoon of high quality vanilla extract. Whisk 2-4 (depending on the size of your casserole) fresh farm eggs in a bowl and add several cups of half and half or heavy cream. Place the slices of bread into the casserole(s). Generously (and I mean generously) butter the bottom of a large casserole dish or several individual sized casserole dishes. Slice the crusty stale bread into once inch slices. But I digress, here is the recipe for a famous New Orleans breakfast tradition. I think the juxtaposition of smells, tantalizing and repulsive, was representative of the mixture of beauty and decay, good and evil inhabitants, and all the joy and sadness that filled the streets of such a soulful city. Not that I was there by night but as is true in most major American cities, there are attractions for tourists where locals never go. French Quarter mornings were so different from the raucous noise and drunken revelry of Bourbon St. There were friendly shop keepers hosing the sidewalks in front of their establishments in the quiet mornings, chatting with the locals, passersby like me. There were pirates and fortune tellers and artists on Jackson Square, Ruthy the Duck Lady who skated over the rough cobblestoned streets talking to herself, pet ducks in tow. These descriptors of French Quarter scents also described the characters who lived there. It may seem odd to mention this right before providing instructions for a delicious recipe, but I was fascinated by the phenomena of sweet and sour, savory and unsavory, pleasant and unpleasant. Of course the French Quarter in the mornings is also a mixture of unsavory smells of stale beer, urine and vomit. When I wasn’t “in the field” chasing hunting and fishing stories all over the state of Louisiana, I would walk the streets every morning soaking up the scents of coffee roasting and brewing and breakfasts like pain perdu cooking. I have vivid memories of my years working at the Wildlife and Fisheries building in the French Quarter. It is something like French toast but oh so much more delicious because of the thick custard and baking in the oven which makes it almost like a soufflé. This traditional way of reviving stale bread by dipping slices into a milk-egg mixture and frying in a pan (or baking in a casserole) until crispy golden brown is known in France, and Louisiana, as pain perdu. It is the perfect repurposing of day-old French bread. This is my own version of “Lost Bread”, a tradition I learned from my decades of living in New Orleans.
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