Guest guest Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 In response to a post about egg replacers, here is my recipe for vegan French toast. Keep in mind this is not a health recipe! 1) First things first, you need to aquire some GOOD vegan bread. Don't use that nasty wonder stuff for this recipe, it is too soft and it just won't work. You need special ocasion bread. The bread you use, should be light, and slightly sweet. It should have a thin soft crust. O good Kaiser roll, or, vegan Brioche, or Challah (the orignals are very buttery and eggy) type breads if you can find them. I don't think this is the time for whole wheat, even though I love it. French toast is a splurge. Slice the bread to the thickness you enjoy. 2) Eat the bread fresh the first day. Then when it has dried out slightly, use it in this recipe the second day. Or, just toast the bread , very lightly in the toaster, or oven the day you buy it. It is importatnt to have day old or toasted bread. It helps the mixture absorb into the bread. In French, French toast is called Pain Perdu, which means lost bread - day old bread of course being what promted the recipe's invention by frugal housewives in days gone by. 3) In your food processor, blend up a block of tofu. (Firm or extra firm) Now, no pussyfooting around Batman. I mean turn this stuff into pudding. It must be completely smooth for the recipe to work . 4)After that, add a heaping tablespoon of (raw if you like) honey to the tofu, and a pinch of stevia extract powder. Process again. Then continue adding honey to taste to the mixture. It doesn't have to be very sweet, but you do want to counter the tofu tast a little. (You don't have to use stevia of course, but I love it. I think you may want to though, because as you know, it takes more honey (sucanat, ect) to sweeten up tofu than it does with animal products. All that extra honey does add up to extra calories. The other reason I recomend stevia to stretch the honey is because too because using more honey proportionately, as you need to do with tofu, or course is going to cause more caramelization on the fried surface. You don't want the outside to blacken before the inside is set. With that said, you don't have to use honey either, although I recommend it. Honey is much stronger tasting than other sugars, and you need less of it when you work with tofu, than you would, say sucanat. Honey, magical substance that it is, doesn't caramelize exactly the way sugar does either. It dosn't get hard and brittle as quickly. This is especially true when you use raw honey. You will have to worry less about over browning the outside before the surface sets if you use honey. On the other hand, maple syrup and tofu have a special affinity, and you might even want to experiment with black strapp molases. I don't think that all molases would be a good direction to take this recipe. It certainly would not look as apetizing being such a dark color. A little bit might be something. Eggs and molases both have a delicate hint of stinky sulfuryness to them. It might be something you like. You can certainly use Sucanat, and even that devitalized denison of destruction - refined white sugar- (I use it sometimes too) if you really feel the need. This will result in a crispier browner exterior.) 5)Add to the mixture, cinamon to tasts. I like a lot. Good fresh cinamon is important to the dish as a whole. It wafts it's sweek fragrance through the house long before you sit down to the table, but remember cinamon is another sugar extender. 6) Now, what you need to do, is thin the mixture out a little. I use water, but soymilk is good too if you have some. Add a little at a time. You want it to run, but not be thin. When you pick some up, and pour it back off the spoon, it should flow in an even stream, like crepe batter. It should be significantly thicker than the traditional egg french toast mixture - more like yogurt that you have just stirred up - This is important, because eggs and tofu bind the middle of the tofu two different ways.In both cases the mixture gets into the nooks and crannies of the bread. When you heat the bread, the proteins in eggs speed up thier movement, break apart, and eventually become tangled and solid. You put in a liquid, and you take out hard good eggs. Tofu on the other hand, is only going to become as solid, as the amount of water you cook out of it. This is why the mixture must be thicker, and why I start out with firm tofu. 7) Put your bread slices in the a bakind pan laid out flat. Pour the mixture over the bread. Let the mixture absorb into the bread for a few minutes. There shouldn't be a lot on the outside. If there is, take it off, and thin it out a very little bit more. 8) Now heat up a light tasting oil in a cast iron or stainless steal pan. Like I said this isn't a health recipe. You are going to heat the oil up medium high (which usually you don't want to do) - just don't let it smoke. Also, we're not talking a thin film of oil here. Use a good quarter of an inch. We don't want the toast to deep fry, but we do want it to crisp up nicely all around. For a tropical variant, use extra virgin coconut oil, which yeilds a much different taste and texture. 9) Fry a few peices at a time, and brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels. You will see this oil frying method is so much tastier more crisp than any thing your mother ever was able to come up with using butter. If for some reason, the insides are not set to the firmess you desire simply place the slices in a dry pan in a low oven. You can also use this technique to hold the slices while you prepare more if you are serving a crowd. Then, take a dry pan, add a very small amount of oil, and heat quickly on both sides, just to recrisp the exterior before you serve. 10) You may like just a dusting of powdered sugar over your vegan French toast. I like a little bit of real maple syrup - maybe even from Quebec! You might also like to add a small dollop of earth balance spread, or extra virgin coconut oil, in stead of butter to melt over and mix with the syrup. Enjoy! Sincerely, Matt Di Clemente Brick, New Jersey P.S. We all know that consuming too much refined vegetable oil, and especially heating them is no good for us. To make this recipe more heart healthy (even excepting the white brad), follow the instructions through step 7. Now take a clean baking dish, and grease it well with healthful extra virgin olive oil. Wetting your hands with cool water will make this task easy. (Use a mild tasting olive oil if you have one. It's not that the dish will taste like olive oil. All olive oils taste vey mild when they are cooked. It would be a waste to use your best, pungent fruity olive oil, when you were going to cook the flavor out of it, instead of fresh, or on a salad.) Lay the slices in the pan, and bake in a low oven. Start checking after 45 minutes. You may want to make the tofu mixture thiner for this variation, since the oven is a dryer cooking method. Let us know how it turns out. M.D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 wow! that's quite a recipe....very descriptive. i didn't think vegans ate honey. what could be used instead? thanks, susie --- Mateo179 wrote: > In response to a post about egg replacers, here is > my recipe for vegan > French toast. > Keep in mind this is not a health recipe! > > 1) First things first, you need to aquire some GOOD > vegan bread. Don't use > that nasty wonder stuff for this recipe, it is too > soft and it just won't > work. You need special ocasion bread. The bread you > use, should be light, and Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Hey, thanks for the encouragement. I try to share everything I know when I give a recipe. Sorry for typos by the way. You brought up a good point. If you are a vegan who objects to bee products, you don't have to use them. What I would use in this case would be maple syrup, with a tiny big of black strap molases. This tastes a little different. The molases some how gives the dish a hint of real eggs. (Also try a tint spray if Bragg Liquid Aminos(a natural fermented soy product -see www.bragg.com, or your healthfoor store)or a tiny pinch of black salt for a similar effect, used in dishes instead of salt.) I didn't make Maple syrup my first recomendation, only because it is so much more expensive. I think for your dollar, it's best used on top of a dish fresh at the end - a little goes a long way. Tofu and maple syrup are wonderful of course. At the end of the day though, any natural sweetener will work in this dish, so feel free to experiment, and make it your own. Sincerely, Matt Di Clemente Brick, New Jersey , " artichoke72x " <artichoke72x wrote: > > > wow! that's quite a recipe....very descriptive. > i didn't think vegans ate honey. what could be used > instead? > thanks, > susie > > --- Mateo179 wrote: > > > In response to a post about egg replacers, here is > > my recipe for vegan > > French toast. > > Keep in mind this is not a health recipe! > > > > 1) First things first, you need to aquire some GOOD > > vegan bread. Don't use > > that nasty wonder stuff for this recipe, it is too > > soft and it just won't > > work. You need special ocasion bread. The bread you > > use, should be light, and > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.