Le Pain: No. Not “pain”

Perdu(e): Lost. Like I was in the middle of France my first week here.

Le Sucré: Sugar. (You probably guessed that one.)

Pain Perdu Sucré. This is the French version of French bread.

OUI. The French make French bread. They just call it something different.

If you are French, you buy a baguette almost once a day. That’s a fact. However, as much as you try there is no way that you and your family and friends can consume all of the baguettes you buy. So what do you do with the leftover stale baguettes?

One. You can freeze them and reheat them in the oven when you have forgotten to make a trip to your local boulangerie. Two. Freeze them and reheat them in the oven for raclette (super good dish of the area I live in. Blog post coming soon…). Three. When you have no dessert for after dinner or just really want to have this for dessert, you turn your stale bread into Pain Perdu Sucré. French Bread.

And that’s why it’s literally called “Lost Bread.” You can’t eat bread that is as hard as a rock. It’s even hard to cut with a knife!

The recipe is basically the same. Bread, eggs, milk, sugar. Mix it up. Put it in a pan. Eat it while it’s hot. Goooood Stuff.

Even though the recipe might be the same, there are a few differences. While Americans–in my experience–tend to use sandwich bread and maybe homemade bread, the French use baguettes. Also, Americans normally tend to looooove to smoother some good olde syrup on top of their French Bread, while the French normally have a variety of different toppings that they use. Syrup (yes, but in French amounts), jam, caramel, just straight-up sugar, etc. The taste, however, is most satisfyingly the same.

Mmmmmmm… Goodness.

Also, the French eat this dish for dessert. I don’t know how they’d feel about making this for breakfast…

I’m so glad we made pain perdu sucré the other night. I didn’t realize that I missed French bread, nor that it reminded me of home!!

P.S. MY PARENTS ARE ON THEIR WAY TO SEE ME AND I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED!!!!!