If smoke detectors were around when my older brother and I were growing up and we’d had one in our kitchen, it would have been beeping off the wall almost every morning during summer vacation. My brother was particular about his “egg bread,” now known as the more sophisticated French toast, so he would make his own before going outside to get the farm work done.
Egg bread came to mean something else to me years later when friends from Australia came to visit. When I asked what they usually ate for breakfast, they said, egg bread. So, I whipped up a big batch while they were busy with the rest of our family. When it was done, I called them to the table and they looked at breakfast with a quizzical smile and said, “Oh, French toast!” I said, “No, this is the egg bread you said you liked.”
Our guests began to laugh and said, “We call this French toast,” and then explained that egg bread is when you take a piece of bread, butter it on both sides and cut a small circle out of the center. You put it in a skillet and crack an egg directly in the hole you made in the center of the bread. You fry it till the bread is toasted on the bottom, then flip it over and brown the other side till the egg is cooked. Meanwhile you put the circle of bread in the skillet too and flip it over to brown on both sides and you use that to dip in the center of the egg.
You learn something new every day! My friends’ egg bread is like this recipe I found for Stuffed French Toast because it’s sort of a meal in itself. If you like French toast (or egg bread) with sausage and maple syrup, you’ll love this new twist on a favorite breakfast. It gives you a great start on the day!
STUFFED FRENCH TOAST
8 slices French bread (1 1/2 inches thick)
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 (8-ounce) package brown-and-serve sausage patties, cooked
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Swiss cheese
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Maple syrup, optional
Cut a pocket in the crust of each slice of bread. Butter the inside of pocket. Cut the sausage into bite-size pieces; toss with cheese. Stuff into pockets. In a shallow bowl, beat eggs, milk, sugar and cinnamon; dip both sides of stuffed bread and cook on a greased hot griddle or iron skillet until golden brown on both sides. Serve with maple syrup if desired. Makes 4 servings.
Note: I used half a pound of bulk pork sausage and browned it first, drained the grease and put meat on paper towels to get out any excess fat. When it cooled, I mixed it with the shredded cheese.
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