A twist to pain perdu

Pain perdu is not pain in your joints or anything. It means "lost bread" in French. I must admit lost bread doesn't mean anything else except perhaps you lost your bread or did the bread lose its way?

Seriously pain perdu is french toast as we all know it. Originally pain perdu was designed to put stale bread to good use instead of throwing it away.

I've made a twist to the regular french toast for breakfast this morning. I wanted something filling, something for me to play around in one of my favourite playgrounds - Carmel's Kitchen. And I opted to bake so that I don't have to mop the floor again.

It took less than 10 minutes to prepare and while it sat in the oven for 10 minutes, I was cleaning up the kitchen.

Ingredient:
• 1 egg
• 30 ml of milk
• Cinnamon, Freshly ground black pepper and Italian herbs to taste
• 4 slices of thick cut bread (any bread will do...not necessarily stale bread but stale bread makes better pain perdu)
• Grated cheese (any cheese will do)
• 2 gourmet sausages

Instructions:
• Soak bread in milk thoroughly.
• Beat egg with cinnamon, freshly ground black pepper and Italian herbs.
• Soak bread in egg mixture.
• Place bread on baking tray.
• Arrange sliced sausages on the bread.
• Top with cheese.
• Sprinkle with a little Italian herbs for some extra flavour when you bite into the cheese.
• Bake in a preheated oven at 150C for 10 minutes till cheese melts.
Bake a little longer if you like the whole toast to be crispy. I prefer mine to be crisp on the outside and slightly soft inside.
By not mixing the egg and milk as most recipes suggest, you basically get the egg to coat the goodness and flavours of the milk inside. You can imagine that every bite into the toast is an explosion of flavours in layers.

I don't make french toast with stale bread though...never seem to have them at home. And would normally go for bread with a whole lot of grains, nuts and seeds in them for some extra ooomph.

You can actually make it sans cheese and sausage. Then you top it with maple syrup, yoghurt and some fresh fruits for a wholesome healthy breakfast.

Oh! Serve it with some salad on the side for a complete meal.