Golden Bread Is The Canadian French Toast With Hard-Working Origins

While a delicate French toast recipe can easily steal the spotlight at an elegant brunch table, Canadian French toast has huskier origins. Chefs working at logging camps would soak stale bread overnight and fry up the pieces in the morning to serve hardworking lumberjacks. To start the day, energy-packed meals were consumed, and fried, golden pieces of eggy bread were perfect companions to juicy slabs of ham and bacon. Also called pain dore, golden bread, Canadian French toast looks gold once fried and covered with maple syrup. Along the streets of Quebec, you'll find pan-fried pieces topped with syrup, cinnamon, and brown sugar to dial up the intensity of the golden color. 

If you want to replicate the dish, do yourself a favor and find the proper maple syrup. Grade A printed on labels can help you identify what is 100% pure Canadian maple syrup. The ingredient can take a significant chunk of your pocketbook, but if you're looking for a piece of Canadian French toast heaven, this is the path to serving up satisfying golden pieces of toast.

Like with any French toast recipe, stale bread tends to soak up eggs better than fresher slices. Whether you use Texas toast or Challah bread to make Canadian French toast, be sure your frying pan has enough oil to heat up and turn pieces golden brown. Perfectly cooked slices of French toast should be crunchy on the outside and give way in the middle, and, of course, the golden pieces can be topped with your choice of fruits, spreads, whipped cream, and powdered sugar. 

Howard Middleton, from "The Great British Bake Off," created a Canadian French toast that can be enjoyed minus the gluten. His recipe can be converted to a sweeter dish with cinnamon, chopped Medjool date, and slices of banana or turned into a savory dish with smoked paprika and bacon. To pay proper homage to the Canadian name, plate your sweet pieces of maple-drenched toast with Canadian bacon, or consider adding a splash or two of Canadian whisky to the custard you whisk up for bread dunking. The sweet and salty dish hits all the right notes and you certainly don't need to be a lumberjack to appreciate this dish.