Pain Perdu

Pain perdu literally means 'lost bread,' and the name describes exactly why the recipe exists: stale bread, too hard to eat on its own, rescued by soaking it in eggs and milk and frying it in butter. It's a use-it-up recipe rather than a dessert designed from scratch, with versions documented in French cooking as far back as the Middle Ages, long before 'French toast' became the English name for the same technique. What separates a successful slice from a failed one is soaking time: if the bread sits too briefly in the mixture, the centre stays dry and raw after frying; if it sits too long, it falls apart before it even reaches the pan. Slightly stale bread works better than fresh precisely because it absorbs the liquid evenly, without turning into paste.