How do I make French toast in a toaster oven?

October 31, 2007 10:55 AM

MacGyver Filter. I'm hungry, sitting in my new apartment with very few kitchen implements. I have: bread, egg beaters, cinnamon, pepper, maple syrup, a fork, a salad bowl, and a toaster oven with a cookie sheet type rack. Can I make French toast?
posted by media_itoku to Food & Drink (17 answers total)

Have you introduced yourself to the neighbors yet? Needing to borrow a skillet might be a good excuse.
posted by contraption at 10:59 AM on October 31, 2007

I'm going to say yes. Soak the bread in the egg beaters in the plastic bowl, place on cookie sheet in toaster oven on broil, broil one side, flip, broil other side. Sprinkle with cinnamon, cover with syrup, eat with fork.

I have no use for the pepper, though.
posted by dpx.mfx at 10:59 AM on October 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh wait, I was assuming you had a stove. Do you?
posted by contraption at 10:59 AM on October 31, 2007

For real? Sure. Dump egg beaters in the salad bowl. Add some cinnamon. Soak the bread in egg beaters/cinnamon. Put in oven until done. If you have something to put the raw french toast on, use it. Otherwise they'll drip egg stuff on the bottom of the oven.
posted by jquinby at 11:00 AM on October 31, 2007

Can the salad bowl fit in the toaster oven and is it safe to do so with it? You could bake your French toast instead of frying it by first toasting the bread, then putting everything in a bowl/pan into a baking-type apparatus.

(No oven in the apartment? Ugh)
posted by mkb at 11:00 AM on October 31, 2007

For sure you can!

Ditto Contraption but I would mix the cinnamon and a bit of the syrup right in the egg beaters. Ah hell, throw some pepper in there and call it Fusion French Toast
posted by ian1977 at 11:02 AM on October 31, 2007

Why not? Pour egg beaters in the bowl (maybe 1 egg equivalent for 4 slices of bread); mix with cinamon and if you want pepper, though I wouldn't. I'd get the toaster over on and heating your cookie sheet rack for a couple of minutes, and then soak one slice of bread at a time, not too much since your rack has no sides, and since you're not using a saucepan, and put the wet slices on the rack and in the oven. I'd watch for signs of cooking and at some point use that fork to flip over the slices. Remove when they start looking toasty.
posted by tonci at 11:03 AM on October 31, 2007

You could probably make something that was not quite entirely unlike French toast.

Beat the eggs, add some cinnamon, dunk the bread in it. Cook it on the sheet in the toaster. It’ll cook. It might not be the best French toast you’ve ever had, but it’ll taste similar.

I would preheat the toaster and sheet first. If you can scrounge up any sort of lubricant (butter, canola oil, WD-40, KY Jelly, etc) you might want to grease the pan first.

This thread demands a follow-up. With pictures.
posted by bondcliff at 11:03 AM on October 31, 2007

Wow, you're gonna have to be real careful and work slowly with this one. No guarantee of success, but give it a shot.

Preheat the toaster oven to, say, 250 degrees. Beat the eggs, dip in the toast, yada yada yada. Make sure they're fully saturated. At this point, I'd recommend butter on the cookie sheet or oil -- it's not a frying pan -- but since you don't have this option, prepare for the potential of a serious elbow-grease cleanup.

Place the saturated bread on the pan, and watch what happens in the toaster oven. Watch hard. Anything bubbling or burning? If so, adjust the heat downward. Or, if progress is less then desired, adjust the heat upward.

Still watching the toast? Good. When it's fully cooked to the interior, looking browned if possible, turn the oven to "broil," and try to aim for that singed look. By "try," I'm not guaranteeing results here.

Extract rack from oven, sprinkle cinnamon on bread, and serve piping hot on said rack.

Through the pepper in the trash (or save for later).
posted by Gordion Knott at 11:05 AM on October 31, 2007

bondcliff- KY Jelly, good idea. Maybe he could even use the kind that heats up when you blow on it, might be able to skip the toaster oven.
posted by ian1977 at 11:05 AM on October 31, 2007

This thread is just PEPPERED with good ideas.

Bam!
posted by ORthey at 11:20 AM on October 31, 2007

Baked french toast works fine. Make sure to preheat the toaster oven.
posted by caddis at 11:26 AM on October 31, 2007

Did it work?
posted by craven_morhead at 11:31 AM on October 31, 2007

Response by poster: You guys are AWESOME. I am now munching on my tasty toast. The process:

1) preheated toaster oven & sheet to 300.
2) used fork to mix egg beaters in salad bowl with cinnamon and a little pepper (weird, but I like pepper on my French toast. Also nutmeg when I have it).
3) soaked a piece of bread in aforementioned tasty solution.
4) placed in toaster oven one piece at a time. There was a satisfying sizzling sound.
5) looked for and failed to find any setting marked "broil" (curse you, Hamilton Beach) and cranked it up to 450 as a compromise.
6) waited with hungry staring eyes. Ohh, the anticipation.
7) removed from toaster oven. The bread had stuck to the cookie sheet (due to lack of KY jelly) so subsequent pieces were a little harder to remove.
8) maple syruped.
9) ingested and praised Metafilter.

Sadly there was no camera in my MacGyver kit. But I raise my mid-afternoon breakfast toast in salute to you all.
posted by media_itoku at 11:49 AM on October 31, 2007

bondcliff: Because of its complex, spicy flavor profile, WD-40 is really more of a Southwestern omelet lubricant than a French toast one.
posted by box at 11:58 AM on October 31, 2007

I generally use nutmeg in place of pepper, but to each his own, you know? Pepper in French toast makes a little more sense if you've ever eaten pfeffernüsse.
posted by eritain at 7:52 PM on October 31, 2007

I was going to say "No, because you haven't any eggs." I thought these were egg beaters. Not in the US, apparently. Weird.
posted by robcorr at 12:30 AM on November 1, 2007