International Egged Bread

French Toast with a hint of Eastern Europe

Feb 28, 2009 Robyn Gillam

We generally think of French toast as bread soaked in egg and milk, grilled and served with maple syrup. Here is a less calorific variant with hints of the Balkans.

Known Eggy Bread, the UK, pain perdu in French or pain dorée in Québec, French toast is generally made from bread soaked in milk and eggs and then fried. It is most often served with maple syrup or some equally sugary condiment and topped with cinnamon and butter. Sometimes fruit might substitute as a side for home fries, but who are we kidding? We don’t eat this for our health, unless it’s thirty below and we’re out to chop wood, or, more likely, go play in the snow. Is there any way to make this healthier, or at least less greasy and sugary? Do we care?

An Exotic Alternative to French Toast

Just soaking bread in egg is not the end of the story; in fact there are many existing variations on this yummy breakfast recipe. Here is one that makes use of ingredients from Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

This recipe is for 3 generous servings on 3 slices of bread for 2 hungry people. The dark rye absorbs the egg more slowly but is much heavier feed. The rosehip jam has an underlying sweet, but initially tart flavour. It is made from the hips or seed pods left by roses after the petals have dropped. Recipes are known from European sources as early as 1700 and often utilized wild plants that grew in hedgerows. Although we think of the rose as a high rent garden plant, it can grow like a weed, given the right circumstances. Rosehip jam is popular in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, where it shares space with the even more decadent rose petal jam.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf of dark rye bread
• 6 eggs
• 6 tablespoons of butter
• 6 tablespoons of rosehip jam
• milk or natural yoghurt

Preparation

1. Wisk up 3 eggs and 3 teaspoons of milk or yoghurt (add anything else you fancy)
2. Melt a tablespoon of butter (or whatever you think is right) in a frying pan
3. Soak 2 slices of rye bread in the egg mixture (it takes longer than with regular bread)
4. Fry on both sides in the butter until the egg on the surface turns brown or golden.
5. Take the bread out and slather each slice with rosehip jam.
6. Enjoy the bread on its own or with whatever you fancy.

Suggestions for sides or condiments include more yoghurt or some really exotic honey like Tasmanian Leatherwood.

OK, so it’s not really healthy with all that butter (even if it is organic) and the rosehip jam is really sugary, but at least it doesn’t taste so obviously sweet and you can feel adventurous, if not virtuous.

The copyright of the article International Egged Bread in Healthy Cooking is owned by Robyn Gillam. Permission to republish International Egged Bread in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

rosehips