- 11 hours ago
Learn how to make French Toast (pain perdu) with master French chef Alexia Duchêne. Alexia breaks down every step behind one of France's most iconic sweet dishes, from soaking brioche in custard to achieving a perfect caramelized finish, and making a delicious salted caramel and vanilla mascarpone whipped cream to top it off.
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00:00Today we're making French toast, also known as pain perdu in France.
00:04Pain perdu means lost bread.
00:05It's usually the accumulation of the bread that you have from the whole week.
00:09It's bread that we soak in a custard-like vase
00:12and serve with a salted caramel and a bit of whipped cream.
00:15To start making pain perdu, we need to start with bread.
00:18Here it's a very traditional brioche. It's really what I would buy growing up.
00:23You also don't want the ends because they're quite dry.
00:25The idea is you want enough thickness for the custard to soak
00:31but not deteriorate the interior of the brioche.
00:35When you get bread that's extremely fresh and you soak it and cook it,
00:40it can completely disintegrate and become mush.
00:44So really try and avoid that by drying your bread for a day. That's the best way to do it.
00:48Brioche, I would say, is maybe the most luxurious way of making pain perdu
00:52just because of how it's already a rich bread full of fat with a lot of butter.
00:57You can also use sourdough. A nice milled bread is great.
01:01Now that the bread is cut, the most important part is the custard mix.
01:05Just soak the brioche. Always start with eggs and sugar.
01:10It's kind of like froth them and then add your liquid.
01:13A custard is a mixture of eggs, sugar and milk.
01:18Here we add also a bit of cream to get a bit more richness.
01:22But it's the base of like a crème anglaise, a crème pâtissière.
01:26It's the base of a lot of French pastry classics that then kind of are different
01:31depending on the ratio of eggs, of cream, of milk.
01:35This is what brings the difference to textures.
01:37So once you have your eggs, put your sugar.
01:41And the idea is to beat the eggs with the sugar and make sure they eat nice and frock.
01:47Vanilla bean, but also, you know, do with what you can.
01:50You know, vanilla bean, if you can get your hands on them, go for it.
01:53I know they're expensive, but also you can reuse them in multiple ways.
01:57What I love to do is to have a bowl of rum.
01:59And I've been putting my vanilla beans for six years now.
02:02And whenever I don't have vanilla beans, I'll just put a bit of this rum
02:05in any of the recipes where I want to flavor with vanilla.
02:09And it's just the most decadent flavor you can get.
02:13There is like a tip to extract the most out of the vanilla bean.
02:16Because it's an expensive purchase, you really want to maximize what you can get.
02:20So kind of like just press the vanilla bean and make sure you feel that it's not like dry inside.
02:26Then you want to cut it in half.
02:29There you go.
02:30And then take the inside and scrape.
02:33Half a vanilla pot is more than enough.
02:36You don't want to go too vanilla just because we're also going to put it in the whipped cream.
02:40And you want every ingredient to kind of shine and not just have this overpowering vanilla flavor.
02:45So you just want to whisk the vanilla.
02:48Make sure it's broken down and not like one big lump.
02:51I'm going to add some milk and cream.
02:55And always add a pinch of salt in everything you do.
02:58I know for desserts it doesn't seem intuitive.
03:02But it does bring the flavor out of pretty much anything you do.
03:06Here I feel like the texture of the custard is perfect.
03:10Very, very smooth.
03:12The next step is making salted caramel.
03:15So this will just sit on the side for a bit with the bread.
03:18Doesn't need to go in the fridge.
03:20All the caramel will take a few minutes.
03:21It's basically caramelizing sugar, fine sugar, until it gets darker than you might think.
03:29There are a few things that you need to know to make a great caramel.
03:33And that is a clean pan, clean spatula.
03:37When some of the edges of the pan and your spatula or whatever you're using are not clean,
03:42the sugar molecules will link together and harden, which will make a huge mess.
03:47It's also impossible to clean afterwards.
03:49So the goal for caramel is to go for this quite like amber color.
03:54And you don't want to rush it because if you go too high on your stove,
03:58you will have some pieces of the sugar that's quite advanced in your caramel process.
04:04And others will be quite light.
04:07And you want something that's homogenous.
04:09I love this caramel just because of how it reminds me of France.
04:14You go to Brittany or Normandy, there is a lot of salted caramel just because it's used with the salted
04:20butter,
04:20which really just gives this ultra comforting taste.
04:25So you see the edges are starting to slowly like cook and it's quite even, which is exactly what you
04:31want.
04:31I'm like on medium heat.
04:33And you just want to swirl it a bit, move it a bit.
04:37Let's do a thing without too much intervention.
04:39Fire is not equal everywhere.
04:41So you just try and like push it a bit on the side.
04:44Put the parts that are not as cooked.
04:47Front.
04:48See, I feel like this color is where a lot of people stop,
04:51but don't forget you're adding fat with cream and butter,
04:54which will make your caramel look much lighter.
04:57So you really want to push it.
04:58I can start smelling like light bitterness.
05:02I'm going to push it a touch more and I'll stop after.
05:05Also, if you want your caramel to be lighter, you can.
05:07I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but you won't have this like caramelized notes
05:10that I think are so distinctive of salted caramel.
05:14And then we're going to move to a whisk because as soon as the cream hits,
05:19you really want to incorporate quite well.
05:22Turning it off bit by bit.
05:24Be careful.
05:26It will be quite intimidating.
05:28We're just whisking, making sure you're deglazing every little inch of the pan.
05:34You want to wait for the caramel to cool down slightly before adding the butter.
05:38The only reason is if you add the cold butter in a very, very hot caramel,
05:42you can start splitting.
05:44So you're not going to cool it completely, but just a touch.
05:48The last step is to add butter and fleur de sel.
05:50Fleur de sel is a very special salt from France.
05:53It's very fine.
05:55As weird as it sounds, it doesn't have as much saltiness as kosher salt.
06:00It's a bit more of a natural sodium.
06:03So it's milder.
06:04It has, yeah, just a better aftertaste.
06:08Bringing a bit of fleur de sel in your caramel will bring layers to your caramel.
06:11It's more in the mouthfeel.
06:13Two pinches, two small pinches of salt.
06:15It's important that the butter is in cubes.
06:18There's a faster even melting when you cube the butter like that.
06:21And you're just going to do a movement with the pan plus the whisk,
06:24which will basically fold the butter in your caramel.
06:29As soon as you see no more butter in your caramel, you're good to go.
06:35But that is exactly the color that you will get when you get salted caramel in France.
06:40Deep brown, kind of looks like chocolate sauce in a way.
06:44And it's this caramelization that's going to bring complexity.
06:48Caramel is done.
06:49I'm just going to put it on the side.
06:50And now it's time to get into whipped cream.
06:54We have the half vanilla pod that I use for the custard.
06:59I'm just going to scrape the other half so we use everything.
07:02You want quite a big whisk for whipping cream.
07:06It just has a better aeration and brings a bit more volume when you're whipping.
07:11You have the vanilla.
07:12I'm going to add mascarpone cheese.
07:15Adding mascarpone will just add a bit more fat content, texture,
07:19and just like a bit of more density in your whipped cream.
07:23The cream has to be very cold.
07:25When it comes to pastry, certain things are quite important.
07:29And cold cream, when you're trying to whip cream, especially by hand, is fundamental.
07:34Sometimes the best way is also to put your bowl in the freezer for a few minutes
07:37or have another bowl with ice under.
07:41I like to put a bit of the cream with the mascarpone and the vanilla
07:45just to make sure we're incorporating everything the right way.
07:48Here I see that the mascarpone cheese is completely dissolved.
07:51The vanilla is nice and dissolved as well.
07:55I'm just going to add more of that cream, that sugar.
08:00Icing sugar is better.
08:02I think it's superior for whipped cream.
08:04If you don't have the little grainy part of the sugar, it dissolves better.
08:09There are different ways of whipping cream.
08:10If you do this movement, it's more for sabayon.
08:14When I do whipped cream, you can either bring it towards you or push it against you.
08:19I've always done pushing against you.
08:21And I like to tilt it just to make sure I have more of the cream whipping.
08:28So here is kind of the texture you want.
08:30You want it to be spoonable.
08:32It will look different than whipped cream that you would get, for example, in a can.
08:36It will have a more luscious texture and it will hold nicer to make a really nice spoon on top
08:45of the pain perdu.
08:46So now it's time to soak the brioche.
08:48You want to soak it for like a few seconds.
08:51Imagine that the brioche is a sponge and you want it to kind of feel wet inside, but not overly
08:58soaked.
08:59Take a spoon and make sure you're dunking the whole brioche in there, flipping it for a few seconds here
09:05and there.
09:06You want to really press it down.
09:08There are ways to mess it up.
09:10Under soaking will make your brioche visually look nice,
09:13but the center of the brioche will not be like nice and soaked and obviously custard-like.
09:19And if you soak it way too much, it's going to start breaking the sides and look like mush.
09:24Being precise in the kitchen for me is important, even if you're a home cook and you feel you don't
09:29need to be as technical as a restaurant chef.
09:32Just making it nice is just as important.
09:35Here, I feel like the slice is perfectly soaked.
09:38You feel like when you're pressing down, there is some liquid coming out of it.
09:42And that's what you want. You want the custard to feel like it is inside.
09:46Now it's time to cook the pain perdu.
09:49Cast iron is great. Stainless steel, it's great.
09:52I feel it has a better distribution of heat and you want a really nice caramelized pain perdu.
09:58Pain perdu is going to be cooked in butter, but I think that adding a touch of oil helps stabilize
10:05the caramelization
10:07and has a better even cooking without, you know, pieces of butter that are a bit burnt.
10:12You can go with a bit of butter. You want to hear it sing like that?
10:15That's the French national anthem, singing butter.
10:20I just wanted to start looking at touch golden, just making sure the butter is evenly spread.
10:27Some people even put a bit of a caster sugar to get that, you know, more of a caramelized feel.
10:34But I think that because we're adding salted caramel, we should stop here.
10:38Three pieces. I can really feel how heavy they are just because of the amount of cholesterol that's inside.
10:44I feel like a lot of people think of the outside, the visual side, that yes, well, it's beautiful,
10:49but you have to think that there's eggs and cream and these things need to cook.
10:54And it's part of a thick slice of bread.
10:56For that custard to be interesting texturally and not to be just, you know, wet bread in the center,
11:02you want that egg to start cooking.
11:04So you want to take your time, low and slow, and make sure that the center is cooked like it
11:10does.
11:10It's starting to caramelize, but not too much. It's really taking its time, which is exactly what you want.
11:18So you want to play with it, you know, add a bit more heat, a bit less heat,
11:21kind of really be connected to what you're cooking.
11:24Your stove is probably different from the person that did this recipe.
11:27The piece of bread you're getting is probably different from the one I'm using.
11:31Everything is different. So really try and understand what you're making.
11:34And this will make you a better chef in every aspect, not just for this recipe.
11:39This is perfect. This is what you want to get at a really nice color for the French toast.
11:45And now I'm just going to bring it a touch lower because we have already a really nice caramelized top.
11:53You want the other side to take a bit longer so the custard can cook.
11:56And I add a touch more butter. You don't want to go crazy. You know, brioche is already quite rich.
12:02I'm going to swirl the butter, making sure that every little piece has a bit of it.
12:07You add more now because the brioche soaked most of the butter I started with on this side.
12:13And you want to make sure both sides get like this, this decadence from the butter.
12:16The French toast didn't start with brioche. It comes from ancient Rome.
12:23Every country I think has worked around, you know, leftover bread.
12:27And, but the brioche side was popularized by Henry the fourth.
12:33Because he really liked that variation with this bit more, you know, luxurious bread than just stale baguette or stale
12:43sourdough.
12:44This recipe has always been more of a poor man's recipe, you know, for people working class that didn't have
12:51necessary money to buy cakes.
12:53When French royalty started being interested in the brioche version of this dessert, it made this dessert a bit more
13:02bourgeois and kind of elevated.
13:05When it started, it's a very simple humble dish.
13:08And now you really find this recipe in a lot of French restaurants.
13:12I feel like maybe one bistro out of two will have a pain perdu with either a vanilla ice cream
13:19or whipped cream, salted caramel.
13:21It's really a crowd pleaser.
13:23So I can feel like this side of the pan really gets more heat.
13:27So I'm just going to move things around and make sure that all the pieces get this nice, even cooking
13:33time.
13:34When you see that both sides are nice and charred, when you can feel the density is no longer liquid,
13:41but a bit more cooked.
13:43Pretty much done. We're good to go.
13:44And now it's time to plate. Pretty simple.
13:47Just stack two slices, French toast.
13:51I kind of put them one like that, one of it on the side, just so you see the different
13:55layers.
13:56When the caramel falls apart, it will drizzle everywhere.
13:59The key for a really, really nice whipped cream, just a hot spoon will make a really nice little quenelle.
14:07A quenelle is really like a fancy way of doing desserts in restaurants.
14:13In France, a quenelle is the name of a dish that's like a fish mousse that we poach in water.
14:22And it actually has that shape. So maybe that's where it comes from.
14:25Here's the quenelle. You want a pretty nice amount of whipped cream.
14:30And then it's all at the drizzle.
14:32I like to kind of like, let fall a touch of salt on the cream, just for texture.
14:40Yeah, that's, that's Pompère du.
14:42You know, if my dad was here, he would put a bit of sugar on top because he likes texture.
14:47It's time to try it.
14:52It's very good. So decadent.
14:54The custard is like cooked perfectly in the center.
14:58It's nice. It's like not too dense.
15:00The cream is so good.
15:02And this slight intensity from the caramel is just perfection.
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