Soggy bread on a plate with oat fraiche, vegan whipped cream, jam, and maple syrup

Soggy bread

Gibber-gabber

Hmmm…. I love soggy bread. It’s one of my favourite things to make for myself if I don’t have to be anywhere before 11 am (which is also one of my favourite things). And it scales well. I’ve made this for breakfast on several occasions for groups of 10 to 20 people, and it’s been a hit every time.

Soggy bread is my own weird way of referring to a recipe that most English speakers would probably call French toast. If I had to guess, I would say the Dutch generally make their wentelteefjes on the less eggy, more soggy side of the spectrum. My recipe leans closer to the latter – although it’s vegan so of course there are no eggs in it at all. We use a little flour for cohesion instead. That’s an idea I’ve picked up some time ago, but recently, I’ve been experimenting with the spices in the recipe and with technique as well. And I’ve hit some kind of local optimum which I think is worth writing down 🙂

Recipe

Ingredients

  • Sliced bread1
  • 3 tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric
  • 1/4 tsp cardamom2
  • 1/4 tsp ginger
  • 1/8 tsp black salt (kala namak)3
  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg
  • ~100 mL oatmilk
  • a neutral oil and/or vegan butter for frying4

Method

Step 1 Whisk together the flour and spices. Then add the oatmilk bit by bit while whisking, to create a batter without lumps.

Bowl with mixed flour and spices
Bowl with a whisk and a thin batter: flour, spices, and oatmilk

Step 2 Heat up a pan, then add the oil/butter.

Step 3 Soak the bread slices in your batter.
With sturdy bread – such as a crusty sourdough – you can really leave the slices soaking for a moment and just let the excess batter drip off. Softer bread (like you usually get in the supermarket) soaks the batter up quite fast and you want to be careful not to let the slices fall apart.

Step 4 Fry the soaked slices of bread on both sides until you get some browning and crispy bits.

Soggy bread frying on the first side in oil and butter
Soggy bread frying on the second side. The first side shows some browning
Soggy bread on a plate with oat fraiche, vegan whipped cream, jam, and maple syrup

To serve Now this is where this stops being a budget recipe, because I like to have my soggy bread with a large quantity of maple syrup, vegan cream, and berries or jam. Enjoy!

Notes

  1. Nice bread, sad supermarket bread, white, brown, fresh, day-old, week-old from the fridge, defrosted from the depths of your freezer, any bread will do.
    The type of bread also affects how many slices you can make for a certain quantity of batter – the softer the bread, the more batter it soaks up. I would guess that the quantity in this recipe is good for three slices of soft supermarket bread (the kind a German would call “toast”). ↩︎
  2. If you’re a cardamom person, add more ↩︎
  3. This is what gives our eggless bread an eggy flavour ↩︎
  4. The butter is mostly for flavour, and I find it easier to fry when combined with oil. I used sunflower oil. ↩︎