Reduced Sodium Brown Sugar French Toast

This restaurant quality French toast recipe is absolutely perfection. Most French toast ends up flabby and eggy. I'm not a big egg fan, so I usually steer clear of it, but I'm stubborn and love breakfast foods. If you're looking to impress your brunch guests, this is the recipe for you.

Using just egg yolks not only reduced the sodium count, but eliminated the eggy texture and flavor and replaced it with an indulgent custard-like texture. Toasting the bread also helped it keep it's structure while still allowing the inside to be nice and soft. Switching out the sugar for brown sugar and adding in melted butter gave it all a more complex flavor, instead of just sweet.

Now this recipe makes 4 servings. The batter itself is 54mg per serving. The biggest determination is going to be the bread you use. You can use whatever store bought bread you like, although I recommend a thicker slice. Or you can really reduce the sodium and use a homemade bread, like mine. I'm still working on a low sodium brioche bread, so look out for a recipe soon, but the buttery richness of it would be perfect for this recipe.

Ingredients

• 8 thick slices of bread

• 1 1/2 cups whole milk, warmed to about 80 degrees

• 3 large egg yolks

• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, plus a couple more for cooking

Directions

1. Heat up a frying pan on medium low heat and place a rimmed baking sheet with a wire rack on it in the oven set at 300 F.

2. Toast your bread. I toast it in between the 1st and 2nd lowest settings on my toaster. You want just a really light color and to dry out the bread a bit. While you're toasting the bread, I like to warm up the milk. It only needs to be about 80ish degrees. It's just enough to keep the butter from solidifying from it being cold.

3. Whisk together milk, eggs, brown sugar, cinnamon, melted butter and vanilla. Pour this egg mixture into a baking pan.

4. Add 1/2 tablespoon of butter to the pan. As it's melting, I soak one side of a piece of bread in the egg mixture and then flip it over to soak the other side. You don't want to saturate it so much that it's falling apart, so I usually like to soak it for about 10 seconds on each side. Using a slotted spatula, I lift up the bread and let the mixture drip off and transfer to the pan. I cook 2 slices at a time. Each side should cook for about 3-4 minutes, until they are nice and golden brown and then I transfer to the baking sheet in the oven.

5. Repeat with the remaining slices, adding butter each time.