The BEST French Toast, using homemade Challah bread

This is one of our FAVORITE breakfasts, and it is SO easy.  I love this recipe because the honey in this french toast mixture compliments the sweet honey flavor of the challah bread, which is the only bread I use for french toast now. This recipe is like a patchwork quilt; a few ideas here and there from other recipes, all sewn together to make this ultimate french toast recipe with some added threads of flavor and a few healthy alterations.


Ingredient List:
3 eggs
1 cup nonfat milk
2 Tablespoons honey
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Bread (For this recipe I like to use 6, one-inch-thick slices of sweet homemade challah bread)

First, you have to set up your playing field. Situate a cooling rack over your sink or over a cookie sheet so that drippings will be caught as your soaked bread rest on the rack for a few minutes before it goes into the frying pan. Set up another cooling rack over a cookie sheet inside your oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F so that your french toast slices can leave the pan and go straight into a warm oven. 

Okay, NOW we are ready to get cookin'. In a pie dish (you want a wide shallow dish so that the bread can lay flat), whisk together the eggs, milk, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. 

**Helpful Hint: In a microwave safe dish (I use a glass pyrex measuring cup), microwave the honey for about 10-15 seconds so that it will mix easier into the other ingredients. Whisk with one hand as you pour the honey with the other, so that it combines easily and does not sink to the bottom of the mixture.

Soak the bread for a minute, and then flip to other side for another minute so that each side can soak up all the goodness: 

Then transfer them to the first rack you set up so that it can rest and soak all the way through: 

After all your bread slices are soaked and ready on the rack, start grilling them over medium heat in a buttered or sprayed nonstick surface, until they are golden on each side: 

As they finish, pop them one by one onto the rack which you set up in your oven. Let them continue to cook through their centers in the oven for about 8-10 minutes. This makes it so easy for them to be all ready and hot at the same time for serving. You can even turn the oven down or off and let them stay warm until you are ready to serve: 

(see how golden and puffy they are! I wish you could bite right into the picture and taste them)

Serve with desired toppings (I prefer a little spread of butter, a drizzle of syrup and, of course, whipped cream!... mmmm)

**Other Fun Additions: 

-Add some juice from an orange and/or a little orange zest into the mixture that the bread will soak up.

-Serve with some honey butter that will compliment the other sweet hints of honey in this dish.

-This is perfect for STUFFED french toast because it is thick slices of such light bread!

-If you don't wish to make challah bread, you can buy a good loaf, or you can use Brioche bread or Hawaiian sweet bread (Fun Fact: I've heard that Hawaiian sweet bread was invented as a cross between challah and brioche!)