French Toast

Use a loaf that is a day or two old, or cut the slices and leave them out uncovered overnight.

Do not treat stale bread as second best here. As a loaf stales its starch recrystallises and forces water out of the crumb, and that dry crumb is what draws the custard in — a fresh slice is already full of its own water, takes up almost none, and fries as buttery toast with a set skin on it.

Cut the slices a full 2.5cm thick. A thin slice has no middle to speak of and goes from raw to collapsed with nothing in between.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl until the yolks and whites are one colour with no ribbons of white left. Any white still in strands sets into rubbery threads on the surface of the finished slice, and there is no getting them off.

Whisk in the milk, caster sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and fine salt, until the sugar has dissolved.

Lay the slices in a large shallow dish or roasting tin in a single layer, without overlapping them, so every slice meets the custard at the same time.

Pour the custard over them.

Soak for 10 minutes.

Turn each slice over and soak for a further 10 minutes.

Judge the soak by the middle of the slice rather than the clock. Cut a corner off one if you are unsure: the custard should have reached the centre with no dry white core left, and the slice should feel heavy and sag a little when you lift it while still holding together.

Take them out at that point. Pulled early they fry into bread with a thin cooked skin over a dry crumb; left far past it the crumb dissolves and the slice breaks apart on the way to the pan.

Melt a third of the butter for frying with a little of the oil in a wide frying pan over medium heat. The oil raises the temperature the butter can take before its milk solids blacken.

Keep the pan at medium and no higher. The custard inside needs two or three minutes a side to set, and over a high flame the egg and sugar on the surface are dark brown within a minute with a raw wet middle behind them.

Lift three slices out of the custard, letting the excess run off, and lay them in the pan.

Fry for 3-4 minutes, until the underside is an even deep gold and the cut edge has stopped looking wet.

Turn each slice once with a fish slice.

Fry for a further 2-3 minutes, until the second side matches and the middle springs back under a finger rather than sinking.

Move the cooked slices to a rack in a 100C/212F oven while you fry the rest, rather than stacking them on a plate where their own steam softens the crust.

Wipe the pan out with kitchen paper between batches and add fresh butter and oil, since the milk solids left behind blacken and the next slices pick that up.

Cook the remaining slices the same way.

Stack two slices on each warm plate.

Set a knob of the cold butter on top of each stack and let it melt down between the slices.

Scatter the berries over.

Pour the maple syrup across.

Dust with icing sugar and serve straight away.

This is the vanilla custard in this collection in its plainest form, whole eggs instead of yolks, set inside the bread rather than thickened in a pan.

The everyday white tin loaf in this collection is the bread to cut it from. A close, tight crumb takes the soak and holds its shape, where a very open or airy loaf goes to pieces in the dish.