This is our family’s favorite French toast recipe! This recipe is easy and made with a delicious vanilla and cream custard.
Watch the Video
French Toast Recipe Ingredients
We love French toast. Specifically, we love this French toast recipe with thick-cut bread slices soaked in a custard made with eggs, milk, cream, and vanilla and then cooked in butter until golden brown. For a baked version, see our crowd-friendly baked French toast.
Bread – Use thick slices of bread for the best French toast. It’s best if the bread is a day or two old. Older bread soaks up the custard better and improves the texture after cooking. We like using bread from the bakery — brioche, French bread, or a rustic Italian-style loaf are excellent examples.
Eggs make the base of our rich and creamy custard.
Milk and cream – I’ve made French toast with milk, and I’ve made it with cream, and since doing so, I’ve learned that a combination of milk and cream makes the best-tasting French toast.
Vanilla extract and salt – I like enough vanilla extract so that I can smell it. It’s excellent with egg, cream, and bread. Salt helps to bring out all the flavors in the custard. A pinch is all you need.
Butter helps us cook our custard-soaked bread and makes the French toast taste amazing. Unsalted or salted butter will do.
Find the complete recipe with measurements below.
How to Make French Toast
First, prepare the custard. Whisk your eggs with the milk, cream, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Now grab a wide baking dish, line up your thick-sliced bread, and pour over the custard.
Move the bread around a few times so it soaks up all the custard. It will take a few minutes. Older bread usually soaks the custard up quicker than fresh bread (another reason to use older bread).
When the bread soaks up all the custard, place the thoroughly soaked bread into a pan with bubbling melted butter and cook until golden brown on both sides.
A+J Tip: Use a Warm Oven
If you’re making French toast for many, use this little trick we picked up from making waffles. Heat your oven to somewhere between 170° Fahrenheit and 200° Fahrenheit. Then, slide the cooked French toast into the oven to keep warm.
They should be fine for quite some time without drying out. This method is a great way to reheat leftovers, as well.
More Easy Breakfast Recipes
- Our Favorite Blueberry Pancakes — This easy recipe makes pancakes that are light, fluffy, and bursting with blueberries.
- Easy Whole Wheat Pancakes — How to make whole wheat pancakes that are light, fluffy and delicious!
- Perfect Baked French Toast — This easy baked French toast casserole is lightly spiced, slightly sweet, perfectly soft in the middle, and has a buttery crisp top.
- Easy Fluffy Pancakes Recipe from Scratch — This easy recipe makes pancakes that are light and fluffy and only calls for a few simple ingredients you probably have in your kitchen right now.
Easy French Toast
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
This is our family’s favorite French toast recipe! This recipe is easy and made with a delicious vanilla and cream custard. One or two-day-old bread is best for making French toast. If it’s fresh, it will crumble or fall apart when added to the egg mixture or during cooking. French, Italian, brioche or Challah bread are all great for this recipe.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
4 large eggs
1/2 cup (120 ml) milk
1/4 cup (60 ml) heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
8 slices day-old bread, 3/4-inch-thick
3 tablespoons butter, plus more for serving
Optional toppings: Powdered sugar, maple syrup, berries, whipped cream, cinnamon sugar (recipe below)
Directions
1Heat oven to 200° Fahrenheit (93° C). Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Slide the baking sheet into the oven. It is best to make French toast in batches. The warm oven helps keep cooked batches warm while the rest finish cooking.
2Whisk eggs, milk, cream, vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt together until well blended.
3Line bread slices up in a large baking dish (it is okay if they overlap). Pour egg mixture over bread slices, then flip and move them around the egg mixture. Move the bread around the egg mixture until the bread has soaked it all up.
4Melt a tablespoon of butter in a heavy, large pan or griddle over medium-low heat. Working in batches, transfer a few slices of the soaked bread to the pan and cook until golden brown and cooked through, 2 to 3 minutes on each side.
5Transfer cooked French toast to a warm oven while you cook the remaining bread slices. Add additional butter as needed for each batch.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- To make Cinnamon Sugar, whisk 1/4 cup granulated sugar with one teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Sprinkle over French toast.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA Supertracker recipe calculator to calculate approximate values.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
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This French toast recipe is the best and I’ve tried many. It’s so simple and not fussy and I even used cheap sandwich bread and it came out perfect.
This makes us so happy, Gene. Thanks for coming back and sharing.
By Day-old bread, do you mean get the bread fresh, slice it and leave it out, or so you mean get fresh bread, slide it, and leave it in the bag? Or don’t slice it until you’re ready for the recipe?
Hi Kathy, any of these options work. We just mean that the bread absorbs the custard best when it is not really fresh.
For a mindblowing alteration to this recipe, try it using slices of day old chocolate babka. Pure heaven, although probably a slight boost to the calorie count. ?
Brian, We love your idea (although, I’m not sure I would be able to save enough chocolate babka for the next day).
Thanks for an easy and delicious recipe for French toast, similar to the much-beloved French toast my husband’s mom used to make. This one is better because it’s made with thicker Italian bread. Hubby put blueberry preserves and a bit of pure Canadian maple syrup on his; I put cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar on mine.
Such great ideas for toppings! We are thrilled you enjoyed the recipe.
Thank you so much for this quick and delicious recipe! This was perfect for a family brunch, and the trick with the oven helped everyone’s french toast remain warm! The only change I made was to add cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg to the custard mixture. Thanks again!!!
Love your idea to add cinnamon and nutmeg. Such lovely warming flavors. I’m so happy our oven trick helped keep everyone’s French toast warm!
What is the serving size?
Hi there, We assumed 2 slices of French toast.
add 1/8 tsp of cinnamon to the custard
Cinnamon would be delicious in this custard.
I would love to try this recipe but for some reason I can’t get it to print.
That is strange that you can’t print. If you contact us with the email address on our about us page we can help you figure out what is going on. We can also email you a PDF of the print friendly page.
As always, terrific recipe!
Well thank you, Judy! So happy you enjoyed it.