How a Master French Chef Makes French Toast

Today we're making French toast,

also known as pain perdu in France.

Pain perdu means lost bread.

Usually the accumulation of the bread

that you have from the whole week,

it's bread that we soak in a custard-like base

and serve with a salted caramel and a bit of whipped cream.

To start making pain perdu, we need to start with bread.

Here it's a very traditional brioche.

It's really what I would buy growing up.

You also don't want the ends because they're quite dry.

The idea is you want enough thickness for the custard

to soak, but not kind of like deteriorate

to the interior of the brioche.

When you get bread that's extremely fresh and you soak it

and cook it, it can completely like disintegrate

and become mush.

So really try and avoid that by drying your bread for a day.

That's the best way to do it.

brioche, I would say, is maybe the most luxurious way

of making pain perdu

just because of how it's already a rich bread full

of fat with a lot of butter.

You can also use sourdough.

A nice milk bread is great.

Now that the bread is cut,

the most important part is the custard mix.

Just soak the brioche. Always start with eggs and sugar.

It's kind of like froth them and then add your liquid.

A custard is a mixture of eggs, sugar, and milk.

Here we add also a bit of cream to get a bit more richness,

but it's the base of like a ceème brulee, a creme anglaise.

It's a base of a lot of French pastry classics

that then kind of are different depending on the ratio

of eggs, of cream, of milk.

This is what brings the different textures.

So once you have your eggs, put your sugar.

And the idea is to beat the eggs with the sugar

and make sure they get nice and frothy.

Vanilla bean, but also, you know, do with what you can.

You know, vanilla bean,

if you can get your hands on them, go for it.

I know they're expensive, but also you can reuse them

in multiple ways.

What I love to do is to have a bowl of rum,

and I've been putting my vanilla beans for six years now.

And whenever I don't have vanilla beans,

I'll just put a bit of this rum in any of the recipes

where I want to flavor with vanilla.

And it's just the most decadent flavor you can get.

There is like a tip to extract

the most out of the vanilla bean.

Because it's an expensive purchase,

you really want to maximize what you can get.

So kind of like just press the vanilla bean

and make sure you feel that it's not like dry inside.

Then you want to cut it in half, like that.

And then take the inside and scrape.

Half a vanilla pod is more than enough.

You don't want to go too vanilla

just because we're also going to put it in the whipped cream

and you want every ingredient to kind of shine

and not just have this overpowering vanilla flavor.

So you just want to whisk the vanilla,

make sure it's broken down and not like one big lump.

I'm going to add some milk and cream

and always add a pinch of salt in everything you do.

I know for desserts it doesn't seem intuitive,

but it does bring the flavor out of pretty much

anything you do.

Here, I feel like the texture of the custard is perfect,

very, very smooth.

The next step is making salted caramel.

So this will just sit on the side for a bit with the bread.

Doesn't need to go in the fridge.

You know, the caramel will take a few minutes.

It's basically caramelizing sugar, fine sugar,

until it gets darker than you might think.

There are a few things that you need to know

to make a great caramel.

And that is a clean pan, clean spatula.

When some of the edges of the pan and your spatula

or whatever you're using are not clean,

the sugar molecules will link together and harden,

which will make a huge mess.

It's also impossible to clean afterwards.

So the goal for caramel is to go for this quite like

amber color.

And you don't want to rush it

because if you go too high on your stove,

you will have some pieces of the sugar

that's quite advanced in your caramel process,

and others will be quite light.

And you want something that's homogenized.

I love this caramel just because of how it reminds me

of France.

You go to Brittany or Normandy,

there is a lot of salted caramel

just because it's used with the salted butter,

which really just gives this ultra comforting taste.

So you see the edges are starting to slowly like cook

and it's quite even, which is exactly what you want.

I'm like on medium heat.

And you just want to swirl it a bit, move it a bit,

let it do its thing without too much intervention.

Fire is not equal everywhere, so you just try

and like push it a bit on the side,

put the parts that are not as cooked, front.

See, I feel like this color is where a lot of people stop,

but don't forget you're adding fat with cream and butter,

which will make your caramel look much lighter.

So you really want to push it.

I can start smelling like light bitterness.

I'm going to push it a touch more and I'll stop after.

Also, if you want your caramel to be lighter, you can.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that,

but you won't have this like caramelized notes

that I think are so distinctive of salted caramel.

And then we're going to move to a whisk

because as soon as the cream hits,

you really want to incorporate quite well.

Turning it off bit by bit, be careful.

It will be quite intimidating.

We're just whisking, making sure you're de-glazing

every little inch of the pan.

You want to wait for the caramel to cool down slightly

before adding the butter.

The only reason is if you add the cold butter

in a very, very hot caramel, it can start spitting.

So you're not going to cool it completely, but just a touch.

The last step is to add butter and fluer del sel.

Fluer del sel is a very special salt from France.

It's very fine.

As weird as it sounds, it doesn't have as much saltiness

as kosher salt.

It's a bit more of a natural sodium. So it's milder.

It has, yeah, just a better aftertaste.

Bringing a bit of fluer del sel in your caramel

will bring layers to your caramel.

It's more in the mouthfeel.

Two pinches, two small pinches of salt.

It's important that the butter is in cubes.

There's a faster even melting when you cube the butter

like that.

And you're just going to do a movement with the pan

plus the whisk, which will basically fold the butter

in your caramel.

As soon as you see no more butter in your caramel,

you're good to go.

But that is exactly the color that you will get when you get

salted caramel in France.

Deep brown kind of looks like chocolate sauce in a way.

And it's this caramelization

that's going to bring complexity.

Caramel is done. I'm just going to put it on the side.

And now it's time to get into whipped cream.

We have the half vanilla pod that I used for the custard.

I'm just going to scrape the other half

so we use everything.

You want quite a big whisk for whipping cream.

It just has a better aeration

and brings a bit more volume when you're whipping.

You have the vanilla. I'm going to add mascarpone cheese.

Adding mascarpone will just add a bit more fat content,

texture, and just like a bit of more in, you know,

density in your whipped cream.

The cream has to be very cold.

When it comes to pastry, certain things are quite important.

And cold cream when you're trying to whip cream,

especially by hand, is fundamental.

Sometimes the best way is also to put your bowl

in the freezer for a few minutes

or have another bowl with ice under.

I like to put a bit of the cream with the mascarpone

and the vanilla just to make sure

we're incorporating everything the right way.

Here I see that the mascarpone cheese

is completely dissolved.

The vanilla is nice and dissolved as well.

I'm just going to add more of that cream.

Ad sugar.

Icing sugar is better.

I think it's superior for whipped cream.

If you don't have the little grainy part of the sugar,

it dissolves better.

There are different ways of whipping cream.

If you do this movement, it's more for sabayon.

When I do whipped cream, I want to...

You can either bring it towards you or push it against you.

I've always done pushing against you.

And I like to tilt it just to make sure I have

more of the cream whipping.

So here is kind of the texture you want.

You want it to be spoonable.

It will look different than whipped cream

that you would get, for example, in a can.

It will have a more like luscious texture

and it will hold nicer

to make a really nice like spoon on top of the pain perdu.

So now it's time to soak the brioche.

You want to soak it for like a few seconds.

Imagine that the brioche is a sponge

and you want it to kind of feel wet inside,

but not overly soaked.

Take a spoon and make sure you're dunking the whole brioche

in there, flipping it for a few seconds here and there.

You wanna really press it down.

There are ways to mess it up.

Under soaking will make your brioche visually look nice,

but the center of the brioche will not be like nice

and soaked and obviously custard-like.

And if you soak it way too much,

it's going to start breaking the sides and look like mush.

Being precise in the kitchen for me is important,

even if you're a home cook

and you feel you don't need to be as technical

as a restaurant chef.

Just making it nice is just as important.

Here, I feel like the slice is perfectly soaked.

You feel like when you're pressing down,

there is some liquid coming out of,

and that's what you want.

You want the custard to feel like it is inside.

Now it's time to cook the pain perdu. Cast iron is great.

Stainless steel, it's great.

I feel it has a better distribution of heats

and you want a really nice caramelized pain perdu.

Pain perdu is going to be cooked in butter,

but I think that adding a touch of oil

helps stabilize the caramelization

and has a better even cooking without, you know,

pieces of butter that are a bit burnt.

And go with a bit of butter.

But you want to hear it sing like that?

That's the French national anthem. Singing butter.

I just wanted to start looking at touch golden,

just making sure the butter is evenly spread.

Some people even put a bit of a caster sugar to get that,

you know, more of a caramelized feel.

But I think that because we're adding salted caramel,

we should stop here.

Three pieces, I can really feel how heavy they are

just because of the amount of custard that's inside.

So I feel like a lot of people think of the outside,

the visual side, that yes, well it's beautiful,

but you have to think that there's eggs and cream

and these things need to cook.

And it's part of a thick slice of bread.

For that custard to be interesting texturally

and not to be just, you know, wet bread in the center,

you want that egg to start cooking.

So you want to take your time low and slow

and make sure that the center is cooked

like a juste specific.

It's starting to caramelize, but not too much.

It's really taking its time, which is exactly what you want.

So you want to play with it, you know,

add a bit more heat, a bit less heat.

Kind of really be connected to what you're cooking.

Your stove is probably different

from the person that did this recipe.

The piece of bread you're getting

is probably different from the one I'm using.

Everything is different.

So really try and understand what you're making.

And this will make you a better chef in every aspect,

not just for this recipe.

This is perfect. This is what you want to get.

Add a really nice color for the French toast.

But now I'm just going to bring it a touch lower

because we have already a really nice caramelized top.

You want the other side to take a bit longer

so the custard can cook.

And add a touch more butter.

You don't want to go crazy,

you know, brioche is already quite rich.

You're going to swirl the butter,

making sure that every little piece has a bit of it.

You add more now because the brioche soaked

most of the butter I started with on this side.

And you want to make sure both sides get like

this decadence from the butter.

Pain perdu or French toast, didn't start with brioche.

It comes from ancient Rome.

Every country I think has worked around,

you know, leftover bread.

But the brioche side was popularized

by Henry IV because he really liked that variation

with this bit more, you know, luxurious bread

than just stale baguette or stale sourdough.

This recipe has always been more of a poor man's recipe.

You know, for people working class

that didn't have necessarily money to buy cakes.

When French royalty started being interested

in the brioche version of this dessert,

it made this dessert a bit more bourgeois

and kind of elevated when it started.

It's a very simple humble dish.

And now you really find this recipe

in a lot of French restaurants.

I feel like maybe one bistro out of two

will have a pain perdu with either a vanilla ice cream

or whipped cream, salted caramel.

It's really a crowd pleaser.

So I can feel like this side of the pan

really gets more heat.

So I'm just going to move things around

and make sure that all the pieces

get this nice even cooking time.

When you see that both sides are nice and charred,

when you can feel the density is no longer liquid,

but a bit more cooked, pretty much done.

We're good to go.

Yeah, now it's time to plate.

Pretty simple. Just stack two slices, French toast.

I kind of put them one like that, one of it on the side,

just so you see the different layers.

When the caramel falls apart,

it will, it'll drizzle everywhere.

The key for really, really nice whipped cream,

just a hot spoon.

It will make a really nice little quenelle.

The quenelle is really like a fancy way

of doing desserts in restaurants.

In France, a quenelle is the name of a dish

that's like a fish mousse that we poach in water

and it actually has that shape.

So maybe that's where it comes from.

Here's the quenelle.

You want a pretty nice amount of whipped cream.

And then it's all about the drizzle.

I like to kind of like let it fall.

A touch of salt on the cream just for texture.

Yeah, that's pain perdu.

You know, if my dad was here,

he would put a bit of a sugar on top

because he likes texture.

It's time to try it.

[bright music]

It's very good. So decadent.

The custard is like cooked perfectly in the center.

It's nice. It's like not too dense. The cream is so good.

This light intensity from the caramel is just perfection.

[bright music]