Celebrate golden toast, surprising history, and the delicious chemistry happening in your frying pan.
National French Toast Day gives us a delicious excuse to turn a few slices of bread, eggs, and milk into something special. But this familiar breakfast also comes with a mystery: despite its name, French toast has a history that stretches far beyond France.
In France, 🇫🇷 French toast is called pain perdu, or “lost bread,” a name connected to the tradition of giving stale bread a delicious second life.
by Norah Dooley
One simple errand leads Carrie through a multicultural neighborhood where families bake and enjoy breads from many different traditions. The story makes a wonderful companion to National French Toast Day because it turns an everyday food into a doorway to geography, culture, and the many ways families make familiar ingredients their own.
As you read, notice what changes from home to home and what stays surprisingly similar.
🏛️ Versions of soaked-and-fried bread existed long before modern French toast.
📖 The name French toast appeared in English writing by the 1600s.
👨🍳 A popular story credits an innkeeper named Joseph French, who supposedly served the dish in 1724 and called it “French’s toast,” but left out the apostrophe.
🇫🇷 France has a long tradition of similar dishes. A French cookbook from around 1300 includes tostées dorées (“golden toast”), and an English cookbook from around 1430 records a recipe called payn perdu.
🥖 Some food historians suggest that calling a humble stale-bread dish “French” may have made it sound more fashionable, but no one knows for certain how the name began.
Now make your ruling.
Should we keep calling it French toast, or does this breakfast deserve a new name?
State your claim, support it with at least two pieces of evidence, and explain why that evidence supports your decision.
Need a little inspiration?
I think we should keep the name French toast because…
or
French toast deserves a new name because…
If you vote for a new name, what should we call it instead?
Have everyone invent a signature French toast creation inspired by the kinds of over-the-top combinations you might find on a restaurant menu. Start with French toast, then choose toppings, fillings, sauces, fruit, crunch, or even a savory twist.
Ideas might include:
Give each creation a menu-worthy name, then choose one to make together or save the rest for another breakfast.
Every adventure has another path to follow. Choose a trail and see where your curiosity leads!
Soaked-and-fried bread has traveled under many names. 🇫🇷 France has pain perdu, 🇪🇸 Spain has torrijas, 🇬🇧 Britain has eggy bread and poor knights’ pudding, and 🇩🇪 Germany has Arme Ritter (“poor knights”), another dish made by soaking bread and frying it until golden.
Wonder Challenge: Choose one French-toast-like dish from another country. Find that country on a map, then discover what makes its version different.
French toast begins with bread dipped in a mixture of eggs and milk, the same basic ingredients used in many custards. When eggs are heated, their proteins unfold and join together, helping the liquid mixture become firmer. This process is called coagulation.
Wonder Challenge: Compare the ingredients in a simple French toast recipe and a basic custard recipe. What do they have in common? Why do you think the finished foods turn out so differently?
For generations, cooks around the world have found clever ways to give older bread another life instead of throwing it away. Stale bread has become everything from French toast and bread pudding to Italian bread soups and Middle Eastern salads such as fattoush. Historical cookbooks even included entire lists of ways to use leftover bread.
Wonder Challenge: Look up two dishes from different countries that use stale or leftover bread, such as 🇮🇹 Italian panzanella, 🇪🇸 Spanish migas, 🇵🇹 Portuguese açorda, or 🇫🇷 French croûtes. What problem were cooks solving, and how did each culture solve it differently?
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I love crab chips, so I’d definitely give the crab chip French toast a try! I’m not sure about the syrup though. 😂
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