My kids are no different than most – they don’t care for bread crusts. The problem is, I spend close to $6 per loaf for high quality sourdough or sprouted flour bread and I don’t like to waste a single slice!
I used to make my own bread years ago when there weren’t any quality breads available. Progress has indeed been made over the ensuing 10 years as more folks are rediscovering the wonders of Real Food, so this is one kitchen duty I have gratefully relinquished to those who enjoy baking more than I do.
With time at a premium in my house, I focus my attention in the kitchen making what I cannot buy for the same quality as made at home – stocks, sauces, condiments, salad dressings, cold breakfast cereal etc.
But, I no longer have to make my own sandwich bread! Hooray for progress!
What to do with all those valuable bread crusts that stack up over the span of a week or two? Maybe your home is like mine where you also cut off the crust at the top of each slice and those contribute to the pile of bread scraps that build up in your pantry.
Here’s a great dish to use up all those scraps quickly and in a fast, easy dish that your family will eat up with gusto. This recipe is loaded with healthy, whole fats so you will have the extra bonus of feeling very full for hours after eating it!
Sourdough French Toast Casserole
Ingredients
10-12 sourdough bread crusts (sprouted bread crusts work fine also)
1/2 – 3/4 cups heavy cream (do not use ultrapasteurized cream)
6 good quality eggs, beaten
Cinnamon
1/2 – 1 TBL sucanat or coconut sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup grassfed butter, melted
Pinch sea salt
Instructions
Tear bread crusts into quarters and place in a large, glass bowl. Beat eggs, cream, and pinch of sea salt together, and pour over bread crusts. Sprinkle in a generous amount of organic cinnamon and the 1/2- 1 TBL sucanat or coconut sugar over the mixture. Gently mix thoroughly.
Pour melted coconut oil into the bottom of a 9X13 casserole dish. Arrange bread mixture evenly in the casserole dish.
Bake at 350F for 15 minutes. Remove casserole dish from the oven and drip the melted butter evenly over the top of the bread.
Place the casserole dish back in the oven and continue baking until the butter has turned the top golden brown (about 10 more minutes).
Serve alone or with a small amount of Grade B maple syrup for dipping.
Enjoy!
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
*This post is shared at Real Food Wednesday!
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{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Sarah,
What brand of bread did you use? Looks real yummy. When i can’t bake our bread I would like a brand i could use. (sometimes there is not enough time to do everything)
Thanks,
Teresa
Hi Teresa, I really like Berlin Bakery’s spelt sourdough loaf. There are MANY good breads on the market nowadays, I would suggest buying the $1 shopping guide from the Weston A. Price Foundation — this handy purse sized brochure is a MUST HAVE. There are many good breads listed and a number of them are mail order if you don’t have a decent healthfood store near you.
http://www.westonaprice.org/images/pdfs/orderform.pdf
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist\’s last post: Sourdough French Toast Casserole
This sounds awesome! Great idea, my kids eat the whole thing but we always waste the end pieces or feed them to the dogs. This will be great for when I have some dry sourdough or rolls too! I usually bake my bread since I made a sourdough starter a few months ago, I just mix, scoop, rise, bake.
Your sourdough method sounds great and easy. Can you give us a more detailed recipe please?
Sarah,
How many cups of bread crusts do you use more or less? We don’t have extra crusts but I’d like to make this recipe.
Thanks,
Beth
Beth\’s last post: February Calendar Religious Headache Help
Hi Beth, this is just a guess as I’ve not measured it before .. maybe 4-5 cups? Just enough so that it fills the casserole dish and is about an inch to an inch and a half thick.
Thanks so much! This will certainly be on my next gottatry list!
Beth\’s last post: February Calendar Religious Headache Help
Sarah,
I have a few questions if you have the time, I would be so grateful…do you have to buy that bread on line? I can’t find it here, only on the internet. Also, the bread you buy is sourdough and it is sprouted, but it isn’t soaked, is it? I know “sourdough” is fermented, but isn’t there a lot of non-soaked flour used? What are your thoughts on that? I am asking because I have a 6 and 3 year old. We have done the GAPS diet and they have been back on bread for almost a year. I do the whole bread making thing and it is a LOT of work. Not to mention they grew tired of the sourdough, so now I make the buttermilk bread (both in NT). They have recently grown tired of that, so this last week I actually bought the Food For Life gluten free raisin bread made with rice and tapioca flour and fruit juice (no sugar or anything in it.) My concern with the rice/tapioca flour bread for my boys is that the rice flour isn’t soaked. But, I just read in NT (sidebar, page 466) that rice doesn’t necessarily have to be soaked. So…was just wondering if you could give me your opinion on these 5 things: 1) Do you buy the Berlin bread locally? 2) In eating that bread, aren’t you getting a lot of phytic acid because although the bread is sourdough, is the additional flour used soaked? 3) Or, if you buy sprouted bread, it isn’t soaked, so then aren’t you still getting phytic acid? 4)Your opinion on the rice and tapioca based bread…is it more harm than good? And one last question… 5) How old are your kids and how on earth do you get them to take their fermented cod liver oil? We get it down but it is murder!! It is hard to mask in shakes, etc., and my boys are too young to swallow pills. What did you do when your kids were this age? Thanks so much for your website. It truly blesses my soul!!
Hi Anon, I buy the Berlin Bakery bread locally. Sourdough breaks down phytic acid as well as soaking. It is sprouting that doesn’t work quite as well. Rice/tapioca based bread is ok occasionally as long as you eat it with a lot of fat as it would be very high glycemic by itself. My kids know to take their fermented cod liver oil or they will lose a privilege. Simple as that. They don’t take it, they don’t get dessert or their favorite TV show or whatever. I never get a complaint about it anymore as they know it is just what we “do” in our family.
Sarah,
I have a son (14 now) with a really strong gag reflex. I honestly don’t think that he’s “playing” me to get out of something. Recently at church the youth group did a silly game where each kid tried a tiny spoonful of baby food. All the other kids gagged their way through, thought it was gross, but managed to do it. He threw up. He’s just really sensitive to tastes, textures, and even smells. I know this is probably a wider range issue than just FCLO, but that’s my biggest concern. With the other kids I can, and do, take away privileges for not agreeably taking the FCLO, but with him, I feel like I’m picking on his disadvantage if I do so. Right now I have him taking Nordic Naturals, but I know that he’s not getting anywhere near the benefits he’d get from FCLO. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for me? Ironically, he’s my least healthy kid (conceived after nearly a year of “the pill”, I ate 100% SAD the whole pregnancy, and he was supplemented with formula after being born 5 weeks early), so he needs the good stuff even more than the others. HELP?
Just do the capsules then.
I don’t think that will work. He couldn’t even swallow the tiny capsules that Mercola’s kids’ krill comes in.
Have you widened his palate, Jennifer? Kids with a very strong gag reflex typically have very narrowed middle third of the face with teeth crowding and do very very well with widening of the palate.
Anonymous,
Hope this encourages you a bit!!! 
Hi there! My children are almost 5 and 3 and have just started taking the cod liver oil. I bought the mint kind and told them this is something we’re going to do every day b/c it’s so good for their bodies. I told them about some of the benefits and they got excited! I give them their little dose and let them chase it with a drink and a bite of their meal and it’s been working great! Like Sarah, they know that this is just what we’re going to do and if they don’t it’s the same as disobeying me.
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I make a recipe very similar to this only mine is just called bread pudding (the old Swedish way). I just throw the whole works into a 4 qt casserole dish and put it together without using two bowls. Anything to save a dish, you know! There’s enough butter and cream in the recipe to keep it from sticking, for those who don’t like that part, but my family likes me to overbake this just a tad so the edges are crispy and even a little dark/burned.
I usually use Vietnamese Cinnamon or even Watkins. I know, the Watkins isn’t organic, but it’s sooooooo good. My Mom always used Watkins vanilla, Watkins cinnamon and Watkins black pepper. A salesman used to come to the door, starting from when I was about six years old and that’s been many a moon now. ;->
Thanks for the reminder. I haven’t made this since DH and I now have an empty nest.
What a good idea! I DO make my own bread and my husband likes the crusts, by sometimes we still have some left over. What a good breakfast recipe! Thanks for sharing!
Katherine\’s last post: Ginger Ale
My boys really like french toast! I’ll have to try this one… thanks!
Melissa\’s last post: Salt Is GOOD For You!
Thanks so much, I’ve been looking for something like this recently!
One question: Do you (or anyone out there) think it’ll work with a dense/heavy sourdough loaf? I have a “brick” in my freezer from my sourdough “learning curve” that didn’t turn out well enough to eat as bread. I wonder if I let the recipe sit in the fridge overnight if it would soften the bread enough to eat? I’d hate to waste all the good eggs and cream just to find out it’s another failure! Thanks for any advice
I’d give it a go .. my sourdough bread is pretty heavy too but the cream/eggs etc really softens the bread well before baking.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist\’s last post: Sourdough French Toast Casserole
OK, thanks for that encouragement! I’ll keep ya posted
What a great idea! My kids love French toast! I’m definitely going to try this! My kids will eat crusts, but no one in the house wants to eat the heels of the bread, so I save them all in the freezer and when I have a good supply, I defrost them, then cut them into small squares and dry them out in my oven. I use these croutons to make my own homemade bread crumbs, salad croutons and herbed stuffing. I don’t like to waste anything either! Blessings, Kelly from The Nourishing Home: http://www.facebook.com/TheNourishingHome
Sounds amazing! What is the difference between Grade A and Grade B Maple Syrup? All I can find is Grade A.
Grade B is darker and full of many more minerals than Grade A maple syrup. Healthfood stores generally have Grade B. Supermarkets only have Grade A usually.
I make a similar recipe that is savory rather than sweet, as it includes browned sausage and omits cinnamon and sucanat. I’m definitely going to try this “french toast”-like version…I know my kids will love it!
I forgot to add this is a great dish for busy mornings, because you can assemble it the night before and place the covered dish into the fridge. Just slip it into the oven the next morning, and you have a delicious meal without the early morning work. I make it every time we have guests staying with us.
Not eating crusts is a truly Anglo-saxon thing! I’ve lived in France for the last 14 years and have never heard of any kids not eating crusts. Babies here are brought up knawing on crusts. My three don’t get enough bread to ever turn up their nose at a crust! But I think you would have a really hard time getting most French adults to take cod liver oil… Still thanks for this recipe and all your great videos I find them very inspiring from this side of the Atlantic.
Helen
This looks delicious! Not to mention easy! My question is, do you think this type of casserole would freeze well? Would you freeze it before or after baking? I am trying to get together some freezer meals and would love to have this on hand!
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Hi Rachel, I’ve never frozen this dish so can’t comment one way or the other. My guess is that it would be fine though.
I tried this this morning with great success! Kids finished it and it was so yummy. My question is similar here. Do you think it would work as an overnight int he fridge? Make ahead night before, refrigerate then bake in the morning? I do another baked overnight French toast but it’s much different and not as good so it’d be great to use this one instead. It’s the only way I get my second to eat eggs! Love French toast!
Sarah, will Coconut Crystals work instead of coconut sugar? Or is the same thing? Thank you.
I will have to try this, It sounds so good. I currently use my “crumbs” to make coutons for our soup. So I may have to make a few more “crumbs” so I can try it. Thank You for all of your wonderful Ideas. I know they have been a large contribution to my family eating healthier food.
Can heavy cream be the cream off the top of raw milk?
Does anyone have a good recipe for real sourdough? Does it use white flour? I don’t eat refined breads but didn’t think you could make sourdough without. My husband LOVES sourdough but I won’t buy it because of the white flour. If there is a recipe out there that doesn’t use it I would be grateful! Thanks
Hi Sarah,
I live in the Palm Harbor, FL area…where do you get your bread from? Do you know of any good bakeries in my area? I would certainly consider driving anywhere in the Tampa Bay are to get good bread.
Thanks