French Toast
So simple, so delicious, this is a great brunch dish.
You could make a savoury French toast by leaving out the vanilla and seasoning with salt and pepper, but we love sweet French toast in our house, and we love to eat it with berries and yoghurt, to make it really luxurious we will sometimes use brioche bread but regular bread is also very good.
Ingredients
Two eggs
50 ml or six desert spoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4/5 slices of brioche bread
50 g butter
Serve with
Irish Gourmet butter cinnamon and honey butter
1 125g tub vanilla yoghurt
Soft berries- blueberries, strawberries, raspberries or a mixture of all 3
Method
Beat the eggs, milk and vanilla in a shallow dish.
Heat the frying pan to a medium heat – you want the butter to sizzle but not brown immediately.
Drop one piece of bread at a time into the eggy mixture count to 3 turn over and then count to 3 again
Add a knob of butter to the frying pan and place the bread over the melting butter
Repeat with the rest of the bread
My large frying pan comfortably copes with 3 slices of bread at a time.
Turn the bread over when it is a lovely golden colour and fry on the other side for another few minutes.
Keep the bread in a warm oven while you prepare the rest.
Serve with a small knob of the cinnamon butter on each slice of toast with the yoghurt on the side and some mixed berries for a delicious treat.
A foodie touch would be to lightly dust the dish with icing sugar before serving
Garlic Butter
We love our garlic butter just about anything tastes better with it. Let it melt over steak, chicken, chops, baked potatoes. Sauté into seafood especially prawns. It is also very good tossed with cooked new potatoes or vegetables before serving.
But our family’s favourite way to eat our garlic butter is on a garlic pizza. Here is how we make it at home
(but feel free to cheat by using pre-cooked shop bought base if time is short)
Ingredients.
Makes 6 to 8 pizzas
- 100 g tub of Irish Gourmet Butter “Garlic butter” softened
- 650 ml of tepid water (I stir 250ml boiling water into 400ml of cold water)
- One desert spoon of sugar (this helps to boost the yeast)
- 2 x 7g sachets of Yeast
- 800g Strong bread flour – Not Cream Flour
- 200g Semolina flour and extra for rolling
- 1 dessert spoon crushed sea salt
- Olive oil
Method
Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the warm water- after about five minutes you should see a slight frothing at the top of the jug, this means for yeast is active and can now do its job.
I mix my dough in a cake mixer but you can do this by hand if you prefer.
Using the dough hook slowly mix the flours and salt together, then add all the yeasty frothy water.
I’m happy to add all the water at this stage as you need a sticky wet dough for a light crispy base.
Knead the dough for 5 to 7 minutes (longer if you are doing this by hand). You want to break down the gluten in the flour.
Here’s how to check the dough is properly kneaded: Take a small amount of dough and slowly stretch it with your hands , if it forms a picture frame, that is a little thicker on the outside and thinner in the middle so you can almost see through it, then your dough is properly kneaded and can now rest.
Sprinkle a desert spoon of flour over the dough (again this will feed the yeast and encourage the dough to rise) cover with a damp tea towel and leave the dough to double in size, how fast this will happen will depend on how warm the room is. You can even prove it in the fridge for several hours or overnight if you don’t want to use it straight away. This is also the stage where you can freeze any extra dough for a later time.
When your dough has doubled in size knock it back, that is you knock the air out of the dough, give it a quick knead by hand and then let prove, or rise again.
Now we’re ready to cook our pizzas.
Turn your oven right up, the hotter the better, if you have a pizza stone put it in the oven as it is heating up, you can also use the back of a heavy baking tray to cook your base on, or it can also go straight onto the oven rack.
I like to place my pizzas on a sheet of tinfoil which I lightly smear with Olive oil and then sprinkle with semolina flour. You can prepare as many of these sheets as you require, e.g. 4 sheets for 4 pizzas, the sheets should be a little larger than the pizza.
Break off a piece of the dough; use approximately 150 g of dough for an individual pizza and 300 g of dough for a larger one.
Likely coat the dough with semolina flour and shape into a ball then stretch it into a circle with your hands. Now on a lightly floured surface (with semolina flour for an extra crispy base) roll out your base.
(Approximately 20 cm for an individual size pizza, and 31 cm for a larger size pizza)
Push your fingers into the base all over, until it resembles the craters on the moon, now spread the softened garlic butter all over the base leaving a gap at the edge, the trick is not to be too generous or too stingy with the butter. Too little and your pizza will be dry, too much and the base might not be crispy. You can also sprinkle some salt and pepper over the base if you like.
Cook your garlic pizza for 7/9 minutes depending on your oven. You want it golden at the edge, paler in the middle and pale gold underneath
Cut into wedges and enjoy
