soggy french toast begone

For years I thought I did not like French Toast. A luke-warm piece of bread coated with mostly-cooked egg? No thank you.

But one day someone I care about requested that I make it for them. I returned a skeptical look, but started to think how I might improve on a dish I did not previously enjoy. Bread? Good. Egg? Good. So what didn't I like about it? The more I thought the less it made sense. Then it struck me: the sogginess, or almost-sogginess. Blech.

Unlike some dishes, I was very lucky that the first experiment I tried (on this one) went very well. Here is what I did:

Ingredients:

1 egg

4 slices of bread (I like a nice thick texas-toast style bread, Trader Joe's has a good one, "harvest whole wheat" I think they call it)

1 cup (approx.) water

5 tbs [that's tablespoons, not pounds] (approx.) pancake mix

powdered sugar (optional)

maple syrul (optional)

Tools:

1 fork

1 spatula (I prefer a thin, narrow one for this task)

1 cooling pan (I prefer non-stick) large enough to lay a slice of bread without the edges curling up

1 flat-bottomed container large enough to lay a slice of bread without the edges curling up (I used a tupperware container meant for sandwiches)

1 tablespoon (ish)

1 drying rack (I use a mesh pizza pan, anything that will not let moisture collect under the cooked French Toast will be fine. Worst case, you can use a plate, but don't blame me for sogginess)

1 whisk (optional, I make the fork above do double-duty stirring)

Instructions:

1. In the flat-bottomed container, crack your egg (toss the shells).

2. Add the 1 cup water, or however much you think you will need to make enough batter to coat your 4 slices of bread.

3. Add the 5 tbs pancake mix one spoonful at a time, and stir the mixture thoroughly with a fork. You could use a whisk, but will be needing the fork later anyway to dip the bread, and I hate to get an extra dish dirty unnecessarily. Add a touch more pancake mix, or a bit more water as needed to achieve a consistency that is fairly runny, a dribblet of which would take almost a full second to slide down a slice of bread (this is important, you'll see).

4. Start your pan heating on the stove at low-to-medium heat (up to you), for 2-3 minutes.

5. Spray (hopefully you have an oil sprayer, if not just drizzle some oil in the pan) olive oil (or your favorite cooking oil) evenly across the pan's cooking surface.

6. Spear 1 slice of bread with the fork, and lay it flat in the batter, letting only one face touch the batter. Let sit for about 1 second, spear with fork, pick it up (careful not to tear the bread), and lay in the center of your cooking pan.

7. Let it cook until you see the edges mostly curled up off the pan, about 2 minutes.

8. Quickly but gently slide the spatula under the cooking bread, pick it up, gently flip it over so the previously uncoated side goes into the batter. Let sit about 1 second.

9. Spear the bread with the fork again, pick it up (REALLY careful not to tear the bread, being half-cooked will make it much softer this time), and lay in the center of your cooking pan.

10. Let it cook until you see the edges mostly curled up off the pan, about 2-3 minutes.
*** If you like your French Toast on the soft/soggy side, you can proceed to #22

11. Now we want to flip the bread a couple more times so that the inside (the part that would previously have caused sogginess) becomes much less moist. I personally flip it 2-3 more times, each time letting it cook for about 1 minute. I can tell it is getting done when the darkest spot on the bread looks a nice deep brown, and when the bread starts to feel firm as I am flipping it with the spatula.

12. Remove the bread from the cooking pan, place on a drying rack (another sogginess-preventer, I use a mesh pizza pan).

13. Repeat steps 6-12 for the remaining slices of bread.

14. Transfer cooked and cooled slices to plates.

15. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and/or drizzle with maple syrup as desired.

16. Enjoy! (use a new fork, or wash your cooking fork, remember it has touched raw egg so do not eat from (use a new fork, or wash your cooking fork, remember it has touched raw egg so do not eat from it without washing! [salmonella, anyone?