When talking about bread, we all think about fresh, hot, smelly, organic bread just out of oven.

I will today present you a traditional recipe to use old, dried bred.

As we all buy bread, we end sometimes with dried, uneatable bread which goes most of the time to birds or direct to the garbage. Not eatable? Wait a minute, I have something for you! It has the smell of a Sunday afternoon at my "Grand-Mère" place.

When my grand-Dad was doing things in his workshop (he was a true maker of his time), we were, my sisters and I, with our Grand-Ma, upstairs, reading and playing. But at one point of the afternoon, Grand-Ma was going to her kitchen and making the Pain Perdu (literally "Lost bread").

It is a tasty way to use this dried bread that nobody can eat except birds.

If you want to cook it too, here is What you need:

25cl of fresh milk
20g of cane sugar (as I did today, you can also cook it with white sugar)
3 eggs (fresh, of course)
vanilla or Orange blossom water (I used organic vanilla extract)

That's more or less everything you will need.

Do you like this I'ble? Please share.

Have a look at my other recipes ;-)

Step 1: Preparing the "sauce"

As easy as 1,2,3...

We will prepare a kind of "sauce" in which we will soak our dried bread.

Pour your milk into a bowl (25cl).

Add some drops of vanilla or Orange blossom water, the sugar (20g) and the 3 eggs.

Mix all those ingredients together. What we are making here is basically a sweet omelette ;-)

Done.

I said it, E-A-S-Y!

Step 2: Cooking the Pain Perdu

First, set your cooking area in order to manage the workflow:

bread should be near
the "sauce" should be also at the centre
a fry pan should be set to cook the bread
a plate has to be ready to serve it hot (or store it with a dome to keep the heat)

Soak the bread slices in the sauce, one by one or as much as your bowl can. If it seems easy, it is an important step: standard slices, i.e. from the middle of a bread, with not that much crust, will be wet faster than croutons with more crust. So your bread should be wet enough but not too much as it could disintegrate.

In the meantime, throw a bit of butter (I personally use salty butter as I like the Sweet / Salt taste) in the hot pan. It is also important to have a hot pan but not burning as it could affect the taste of the bread.

Put your soaked bread slices in the pan and fry them until they have a nice brown colour and a wonderful smell. You can either serve it directly or store it under a dome to keep the heat. Whatever the solution you choose, serve it hot!