This article is about the food. French toast batter other uses, see Egg bread.
French toast is a dish made of sliced bread soaked in beaten eggs, sugar and typically milk, then pan fried. The earliest known reference to French toast is in the Apicius, a collection of Latin recipes dating to the 1st century CE, where it is described as simply aliter dulcia ‘another sweet dish’. It may also be called pain doré ‘golden bread’ in Canada. There are fifteenth-century English recipes for pain perdu. An Austrian and Bavarian term is pafese or pofese, from zuppa pavese, referring to Pavia, Italy.
The word “soup” in the dish’s name refers to bread soaked in a liquid, a sop. In Ottoman cuisine, a dish of bread soaked in eggs with honey but no milk is called fāvniyye. Slices of bread are soaked or dipped in a mixture of beaten eggs, often whisked with milk or cream. 4 to 1″ thick are frequently used as the bread of choice. Sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla may be variously added to the mixture. The bread is then fried in butter or olive oil until browned and cooked through.
OED, the bread was dipped in milk only, with the egg mixture added afterwards. Alternatively, the bread may be soaked in wine, rosewater, or orange juice, either before or after cooking. In both Portugal and Brazil, rabanadas are a traditional Christmas dessert. Many recipes often use Tinto or Port wine. The Danish version of this dish uses sugar with cinnamon, instead of plain sugar.
In France, pain perdu has a wide range of regional variations. It is a popular dish eaten for brunch or breakfast and is almost always served as a savory dish. Sometimes different kinds of cheese are also combined. In India, Bombay toast is a dish sold on the “streets of Mumbai” by hawkers and vendors, Bombay toast is also called Sweet French Bread. Once only a dessert dish, it is now eaten for brunch or breakfast.