Brioche makes the fluffiest of French toasts. This brioche French toast recipe makes an easy, delicious and gorgeous breakfast.
Brioche French toast is one of my favorite breakfast foods for a lazy weekend. Making it is easy to do. There’s really just one big tip, and that’s easy too. Then just add your favorite toppings.
The Bread
One of the secrets to the best French toast is the bread.
Brioche, made from dough enriched with milk, butter and eggs, makes the perfect bread for French toast. Soft and fluffy, it soaks up the egg nicely without becoming soggy, for a light and airy French toast.
Tip: Brioche hamburger buns are a super convenient option. Not all hamburger buns are brioche, but you might be able to find some good artisan ones near you that are perfect for brioche French toast!
Challah, made from a dough enriched with water, oil and eggs, an ancient lighter version of brioche, works very well too.
During the winter holidays, panettone the traditional Italian Christmas brioche filled with dried fruit and candied citrus peel, can be used as a special treat.
Toppings
Syrup
Just a little syrup, all by itself, is excellent to enjoy brioche French toast with. And can you beat real maple syrup? That’s what I’ll be having on mine.
Fruit
Fruit makes a wonderful, beautiful and nourishing topping. I like to keep some of the fruit fresh for garnish and make a delicious quick fruit sauce out of the rest.
Quick Fruit Sauce
To elevate your French toast experience, you can make a quick and delicious fruit sauce by combining fresh and cooked fruit. Instructions are included in the recipe below — it only takes about 5 minutes.
In my experience, the addition of the fruit sauce with a little syrup can produce beautifully colorful blends. And I find that I don’t need as much syrup, because the fruit often provides enough of its own juice.
Favorite Fruit Toppings
Here’s a little about my favorite two toppings, blackberries and red oranges. Read on for more favorites below.
Blackberries
Blackberries, lovely gems of nourishing fruit, are my favorite topping. Fluffy brioche French toast topped with beautiful juicy blackberries pooled in blackberry-infused maple syrup makes a gorgeous breakfast.
It’s a breakfast I eat first with my eyes, blown away by the colors. Once my eyes are satiated, it’s all about the flavors and textures. Known to be a tiny bit chatty in the morning, this breakfast tends to make me very quite. How can anything be sooo good? Please, no talking.
Favorite Pairings: Blackberries pair beautifully with blood oranges (below) or peaches.
Blood Oranges
In the winter, just when the days are shortest, with more dark than light, citrus season comes to brighten our days. Fresh slices of Sicilian blood oranges make an excellent topping for brioche French toast.
Blood Oranges, are also known as sanguine oranges, sanguigni (san-GWEE-nyee) in Italian , or red oranges, arancie rosse (a-RAN-chee-eh ROWS-seh) in Italian.
Of the different kinds of blood oranges available, the moro are generally the deepest red and slightly tart. Tarocco blood oranges tend to be brighter red, and a little sweeter than the moro oranges. Both are great on French toast.
Recommended Pairings: Blood oranges pair particularly well with blackberries. Look for a small window around early May when you can catch both blackberries (May-Oct) and blood oranges (Dec-May) in season together.
Blood oranges have been beautifully described as “oranges soaked in sunsets.” When I’m feeling poetic, I love to use that description too, with a little tweak for morning: How about brioche French toast for breakfast with oranges soaked in sunrises? (Did you just daydream out to the horizon like I did? Come on, tell me you did!)
(Emilio Gadda wrote about these sunset soaked oranges, “arance imbibite di tramonti,” in Meraviglie d’Italia, a 1939 collection of articles about his travels in Italy. They are mentioned in The Land Where Lemons Grow, an excellent read).
More Favorite Fruit Toppings
Here are more house favorite fruit toppings:
- Peaches – Fresh or cooked, peaches make a wonderful topping. I like to either cut them into wedges and add them fresh, make the quick sauce included in this recipe, which combines both fresh and cooked peaches, or make Caramelized Peaches or Stewed Peaches. Peaches pair well with just about anything — blueberries, blackberries and bananas are my favorites.
- Bananas – Bananas with syrup are sometimes all I want (tip: soak the banana slices in a little maple syrup first). But then they go so well with peaches, blueberries, oranges and strawberries too.
- Blueberries – Fresh or cooked. Pair them with a mixture of berries or peaches.
- Strawberries – Fresh or cooked. Paired with bananas makes such a good combo!
- Raspberries – Fresh or cooked. I like to pair them with blackberries, or add them to a mix of berries.
- Mixed berries – Blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries: beautiful!
How to make great Brioche French Toast
Making French toast is a little like making crêpes, in the sense that it’s best if you wait until the pan and butter get in the mood. I picked up that helpful turn of phrase probably more than a decade ago from reading Pépin, and it’s been very useful throughout the years for all kinds of cooking (thanks Jacques).
Perhaps it is the most important tip when making French toast. So, let the cooking begin with just one slice. If you don’t hear a sizzle, wait a few seconds until you know it’s in the mood before cooking up the rest to golden splendor. Enjoy your breakfast!
Recipe
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Ingredients
For Brioche French Toast
- 1 egg
- 2 slices brioche (brioche hamburger buns work well too), crusts removed, or challah bread, ¾ to 1" (2-2½cm) thick slices
- 1 tsp butter for the pan
For Serving
- fresh fruit of your choice (optional), washed and dried (see favorite fruit pairings in notes)
- maple syrup (optional)
- powdered sugar (optional)
For Quick Fruit Sauce Topping (Optional)
- fresh fruit, washed and dried (choose one: around 10 to 12 blackberries, 15 raspberries, 1/2 cup blueberries, 6 strawberries halved or quartered, 1 peach cut into wedges)
Instructions
French Toast
- Prepare Quick Fruit Sauce Topping (optional).
- Beat the egg in a medium bowl with a fork or whisk.
- Dip the slices of brioche in the egg to thoroughly coat and let them rest in the bowl until the skillet is ready.
- Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat for about a minute. Add the butter. When it starts to sizzle, add a dipped brioche slice. If you don't hear a nice sizzle, it is not yet in the mood: wait for it to sizzle before adding another slice to the pan.
- Cook both sides until golden, then hold each slice up on its ends with tongs to cook the outer edges, around 30 seconds on each edge.
- Serving Options: Top with the quick fruit sauce. Garnish with additional fresh fruit. Drizzle with syrup. Dust with a light poof of powdered sugar.
Quick Fruit Sauce Topping (Optional)
- Cook half of the fruit in a sauce pan on medium low-heat for around 5 minutes. (Depending on the juiciness of the fruit, you may need to add a teaspoon at a time of water as it cooks, to prevent sticking).
- Turn off the heat. If desired, mash half the cooked fruit. Stir in the remaining half of the fresh fruit and cover with a lid to allow any syrup formed on the side of the pan to detach while you make the French toast.
- blackberries & blood orange slices or peaches
- strawberries & banana slices
- mixed berries: blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries
- peach wedges & blackberries, blueberries or banana slices
- banana slices (delish tip: pre-toss in a little maple syrup) & peach wedges, blueberries, strawberries or blood orange slices
Nutrition Info: Click to Expand
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