Baked French toast makes a fabulous breakfast where the prep can be done the night before. It’s so convenient, plus you get to use extra bread from your freezer or, like in the example below, bread that is flavorful but didn’t quite come out as you hoped. Unlike many baked French toast recipes, this one doesn’t include butter in the batter and it is not very sweet. The flavor comes from using good bread and from the inclusion of fresh blueberries. Other fresh fruit like strawberries or thinly sliced apples would be awesome too, or try dried fruit like raisins, dates, or apricots. Finally, top it with maple syrup for sweetness to your taste.
This recipe lets you use any bread you want: sourdough or yeast, lean or enriched, dry or fresh. Some people prefer to oven-dry their bread before drenching it in the batter because that way the only moisture in the bread is the batter, but I personally haven’t found this extra step to be worth the effort. For the French toast in the photos, I used a fresh but overproofed loaf of bread made from high extraction hard red spring wheat flour. This was a lean bread — flour, water, salt, yeast — with a crispy crust so the long soak (overnight or for a minimum several hours) was necessary to fully saturate the crumb. If you plan to use a delicate, soft enriched bread, you should aim for the lower end of the range of milk in the ingredient list and the soaking period can be shorter.
Baked Blueberry French Toast
Baked blueberry French toast is a healthy, delicious make-ahead breakfast. With juicy blueberries and hints of cinnamon, serve it warm with a hefty drizzle of maple syrup.
Total Time
1 hour, 5 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 loaf of bread, cubed
- 1 dozen eggs
- 1 – 1 1/2 cups milk (237-356 grams)
- 1/3 cup sugar (67 grams)
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon (5 grams)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (6 grams)
- pinch of salt
- optional 1 pint blueberries or other fruit (2 cups / 330 grams)
Instructions
- In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and salt.
- Add the cubed bread and mix to coat all the surfaces. If possible, cover the bowl with a plate that weighs down the bread, submerging it under the batter.
- Let the bread soak up the batter for several hours to overnight in the refrigerator, mixing several times to redistribute the cubes. Feel free to use a potato masher to make the cubes smaller as they soften. If the bread is not fully saturated, add more milk and mix again.
- When almost ready to bake, add the blueberries and give the bread-batter another thorough mix.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9×13-inch baking dish.
- Spread the mixture in the baking dish and cover with aluminum foil.
- Bake for 20 minutes covered and another 25 minutes uncovered. If you use a metal baking pan, expect a shorter cook time. Aim for the internal temperature of the center of the French toast to be over 160°F. (This is the temperature at which egg is cooked through.)
- Serve warm and drizzled with maple syrup.
- Store leftovers in a covered container in the refrigerator.
