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You can whip up an indulgent brunch time treat on a whim with this cinnamon sourdough French toast with maple crème fraiche. All the ingredients needed are probably already waiting for you in your kitchen, so there’s no need to leave the house. Put a stack of slices together in around ten minutes without even changing out of your pjs. Your lazy weekend just started.

Fancy making your own bread for French toast? Give my Sourdough Recipe for Beginners a try!

Top down shot of french toast with creme fraiche and raspberries on a plate

For an equally celebratory, but less eggy breakfast treat, try these Belgian waffles. It’s another topping free-for-all!

I constantly find myself persevering to finish a sourdough loaf. I will eat sourdough toast until my teeth shatter. I will crumb stale slices until the freezer is full. I will cast croutons into soup well beyond soup weather.

Until now. Sourdough French toast is a revelation that has changed my life. OK, a bit of an overstatement, but it is a big deal!

What is French toast?

Despite its obviously French title, the first French toast recorded was, in fact, in Rome. The French adopted it as ‘Roman Bread’ and eventually renamed it pain perdu, as it’s known there today. The exact translation is ‘lost bread’, alluding to the idea that the bread is stale, or worthless.

And that is what makes your never-ending sourdough loaf the ideal bread for a French toast recipe. As fresh bread is moist and bouncy, adding it to egg turns it to mush and on frying it pure disintegrates into little eggy islands in butter. Yuck. A firm and stale sourdough will hold the egg and its shape resulting in a deliciously sweet or savoury mouthful.

Beautifully golden French toast can be achieved with other breads or other bread products, like stale brioche or crumpets. But for me, sourdough is the answer to my stale bread prayers.

Close up shot of maple syrup being drizzled over creme fraiche on french toast

How to make it

The main skill required for making French toast is the art of multi-tasking. Once you have your bread sliced, egg mixture mixed, crème fraiche swirled with This is an affiliate link.maple syrup and your This is an affiliate link.frying pan hot, it’s focus time. The last thing you want is your first slice of French toast to be cold at the point of eating.

So, get organised. Decide whether you are going to plate up and garnish yourself, or if you’re going family-style with the crème fraiche, fruit and extra maple syrup on the table. Then set up your production line: bread, egg, pan, plate.

Let’s do a walk through: one slice of bread goes in the egg. It soaks for one minute on one side and then flip for up to two or three depending on the thickness of the slice and just how stake it is! The egg-soaked slice goes into the hot butter in the frying pan. And you go back to the start (bread in the egg).

Keep an eye on the slice in the pan. When it is a tempting golden brown, flip it. A treacle-tinted, crispy edged toast is what’s desired. Move the first slice to a plate, the second to the pan, and the third to the egg mix.

If you have loads of hungry folk to feed, pre-heat your oven to 170F/80C and stash the cooked ones in there.

Top down view of raspberries of sourdough French toast on a plate

Recipe variations

There is a danger of over ambition here. A towering edifice of banana, peanut butter, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, sliced strawberries, sprinkles and a cherry on top is going to result in more than a little discomfort and a filling.

So, my formula for a restrained yet satisfying French toast topping is: a hero, or star of the show, in this case maple crème fraiche. The love interest, I’ve employed red berries. And a sidekick; an extra dousing of maple syrup.

Nominees for each category are:

Hero: breakfast meats, like bacon or sausage; soft cheeses like ricotta; or cream; or ice cream.

Love interest: fresh fruits, or spreads like hazelnut chocolate; cookie spread; jam etc.

Sidekick: syrups; sauces; or extras like chopped nuts; sprinkles; or chocolate chips.

Process shot of sourdough bread being added to French toast mixture and cooked

Recipe Tips and Notes

Slice your sourdough on the thick side.
Give each slice a good 2–3-minute soak in the eggy mixture.
I’ve used vanilla and cinnamon in mine, but there is no need to follow my lead when there are so many delicious spices out there. Popular choices are nutmeg, cardamom or pumpkin pie spice.
You’ll need a large and shallow dish to dunk the sourdough in. I use a square or rectangular one. A dinner plate won’t cut it.
The window between ‘toasted to perfection’ and ‘burnt toast’ is narrow. Watch your slice while frying.
If it does turn out a little on the dark side, disguise it with icing sugar (powdered sugar (US)). No-one will ever know.
Soak and fry and fry and soak. Get a production line going so everyone can enjoy their French toast hot!
Crème fraiche and berries are not the only toppings. If you’re letting loose and having French toast, you can throw caution to the wind and put just about anything on it.