Around the World, Frying Bread

‘French toast’ or ‘Pain perdue’ (literally, lost bread) is actually not necessarily French. Some resources suggest that if you stretch your ‘defintions’ a bit, practically every country, culture and cuisine has a recipe for stale bread, dipped in egg and re-animated as a breakfasty-brunchy-snack. Here I’ve eaten toasted bread in a Manchurian sauce (horrible), re-fried bread in coriander, tomatoes, chilies and onions in my Sindhi relatives' homes (sail dub roti, they call it) and of course, something the local frier-upper on the road side used to mysteriously call ‘rock and roll’ which was a boiled potato, chutney and ketchup sandwich, dipped in gram-flour batter and deep fried in oil that was at least four times past its best.

The Brits have eggy bread, the Chinese use soy sauce instead of salt and honey instead of sugar, the Portuguese fry theirs up and then sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, the Slavs eat it with clotted cream or cheese or jam and the Aussies apparently sometimes serve it up with side orders of banana, fried bacon and maple syrup. Really.

I once tried to make French Toast with German Rye bread and it was disgusting but the source of many Euro-cliché jokes all day. The recipe below is ‘Italian’ inspired but in Italy, they actually make a sandwich of mozzarella, then dip it in egg and fresh herbs and fry it up. Our way is simpler and lower-fat.