Use croissants instead of brioche or bread, and prepare your French toast like the traditional recipe. I promise it’s easy and will take your French toast to the next level!
Do you like French toast? You can make many variations with any bread, from baguette to brioche to soft sandwich bread, sourdough to country-style bread, brioche (a quick 2 ingredients must-try), of course, or even with gingerbread. And with croissants, French toast gets incredibly indulgent!
In French, we call French toast pain perdu, which literally means lost bread. Why? Initially, it was a zero-waste recipe for using leftover, stale bread that had become too hard to eat.
So in France, we have all kinds of French toast recipes, but we often use different types of bread or brioche leftovers, not freshly baked or bought. So why not with croissants?
Most recipes I see in English on the Internet or in cookbooks involve thick slices of brioche or freshly baked sandwich bread. Quickly prepared, they are briefly dipped in a mixture of egg, milk, and/or cream and cooked in a pan.
In France, we tend to use hard stale bread leftovers that we need to soak for at least one hour, sometimes overnight, so that they are ready to be used.
How to make this recipe
Use stale croissants. That’s the most challenging part of this recipe—resisting the urge to have leftover croissants that haven’t been eaten immediately! Alternatively, you can buy croissants the day before and leave them to air-dry overnight.
You can always do this with fresh croissants, but then you shouldn’t soak them in the egg/milk mix for too long. Otherwise, they’ll fall apart, and you won’t get a pretty presentation.
- Beat the eggs into an omelet and add milk. You can use plant-based milk or liquid cream (or a half milk half cream mix).
- If you like, you can add some cinnamon or vanilla.
- No sugar is used in the preparation, as croissants are sweet enough.
- Cut the croissants in half.
- Leave the croissants to soak for at least 1 hour or longer if necessary. Wait until the croissants are thoroughly soaked and soft.
You can choose between baking in the oven or frying in a pan
- In the oven, simply pour the mixture into a gratin dish, sprinkle with a little bit of brown sugar, and cook gently, using the grill for a few minutes at the end. Don’t hesitate to pour in all your egg/milk preparation; it will make a wonderful casserole bake. It will then be more like a pudding.
- I prefer pan-frying, however. Fry the croissant halves in a hot pan with a mixture of butter and brown sugar, and you’ll get perfectly caramelized croissants—a real delight.
- I’ll update you when I try this recipe with my Air Fryer.
When and how to serve this recipe?
For breakfast, of course, or as a snack.
You can also serve these croissants perdus as a dessert, using mini-croissants like those we sell in France (mni viennoiseries), which you bake similarly.
Serve with a scoop of ice cream, a little whipped cream or melted chocolate, a sprinkle of toasted almond slices or icing sugar, some fresh fruits,…
Another possibility is not cutting croissants in half but making a hole in the thick center and stuffing croissants with chocolate or jam.
Croissant French Toasts
Ingredients
- 2 croissants
- 2 eggs
- 250 ml milk
- 1 knob butter
- 2 tsp brown sugar
Instructions
- Break the eggs in a large, flat-bottomed dish. Beat them into an omelet, add the milk and mix. Add a little vanilla or cinnamon if desired.
- Cut the croissants in half and place them in the mixture.
- Leave to soak in the mixture for an hour, turning occasionally so the croissants are soaked on all sides.
- Heat a large knob of butter in a frying pan. Add two teaspoons of brown sugar.
- Place the croissant halves, inside out, on the pan. Fry for about 5 minutes until caramelized. Turn over and continue cooking.