[Photographs: Sasha Marx]
I am a type of individuals who does not consider themself as a sweets individual, however nonetheless orders dessert more often than not when out for a meal, and is then haunted for years by the perfection of a few of these dishes. Just lately I have been pining for the proper torrija, the Spanish cousin to French ache perdu (what we name French toast), that I had practically two years in the past at Elkano, a restaurant in Basque nation. It was a small block of brioche-like bread, saturated in a candy custard, with a crunchy brûléed sugar high, served in a pool of the lightest crème anglaise I’ve ever tasted, with a spoonful of milk ice cream on the aspect and a barely dated milk foam over high. When you broke by way of the sugar shell, the bread was like pudding—it was good. After all, there is not any journey now, and I can not even begin a quest to search out the most effective torrijas in New York, so if I wished torrijas, I used to be going to must make them myself.
Conventional and Fashionable Torrijas
The torrija that blew me away at Elkano—with its milk foam, brûléed sugar crust, and quenelle of ice cream—was decidedly fashionable in its presentation. On a special go to to Madrid years earlier than round Easter time, I had loved extra simple variations of torrijas on the aptly named La Casa de las Torrijas, the place they serve snack-sized parts of milk- and candy wine–soaked torrijas. After soaking, these torrijas had been coated in frivolously crushed egg, deep fried in olive oil, and sprinkled with granulated sugar proper earlier than serving.
They had been fully completely different from the iteration I had in Basque nation, however nonetheless so scrumptious. The fried egg coating was delicately chewy in comparison with the crunchy sugar topping of the torched torrija, and the middle had a extra acquainted French toast–like structured softness that also required slightly wrist muscle to chop by way of the bread with a fork, in distinction with the opposite’s spoonable custardy inside. It was extra a candy mid-afternoon snack, whereas the Elkano one was a dessert by way of and thru.
To get a greater understanding of what was what on this planet of torrijas, I reached out to 2 Spanish cooks, Barcelona native chef Marc Vidal, of Boqueria in New York, and Chef Anthony Masas, who cooked for years at El Bulli earlier than shifting to the Dominican Republic the place he’s now the culinary director on the Casa De Campo resort. Each confirmed my hunch that the olive oil-fried torrijas I had in Madrid had been extra conventional—in fact, it does not take a licensed culinary sleuth to suspect that individuals weren’t rescuing stale bread within the previous days with spoonfuls of milk foam and blowtorches. However each cooks favor the extra fashionable method to making ready torrijas at their eating places; deep frying in olive oil will get costly, and requires devoted kitchen house and employees, which is not the most sensible for institutions that are not generally known as the “Home of Torrijas.”
The Bread and Soaking Liquids
I requested Vidal and Masas about their most popular bread and soaking liquids for torrijas, explaining that I had come throughout recipes that known as for soaking stale bread in sweetened dairy (some with simply milk, others with a combination of milk and cream), others that known as for dairy combined with eggs, and but extra that included candy wine. Each cooks like to make use of mushy however dense breads like pullman or brioche, which may absorb lots of moisture.
Basque meals professional Marti Buckley notes in her glorious cookbook Basque Nation that brioche has turn out to be the bread of selection for ogi torrada, the Euskara (Basque) time period for torrijas. As a result of pullman and brioche loaves are each available within the States, I made a decision to go together with these as my torrijas breads of selection.
As for what to soak the bread in, I ran a collection of side-by-side exams that included various ratios of all-dairy mixtures starting from all-milk to a half-and-half combination of milk and cream; custard bases with egg; and even fried up some conventional milk-soaked and egg-washed torrijas to see how they stacked up. I settled on a custard base made with entire milk that’s infused with vanilla, cinnamon, and orange zest after which whisked with egg yolks. It strikes the appropriate steadiness of eggy richness with out being heavy, and it gave me the chance to show the soaking combination right into a crème anglaise–like sauce for the completed dish, eliminating waste.
Do You Want Stale Bread to Make Torrijas
When creating our recipe for French toast, Daniel ran his personal collection of exams evaluating recent, stale, and oven-dried bread to see if you happen to actually wanted to start out with “misplaced” bread. The reply was no, oven-drying recent bread works positive for normal French toast. As a result of this recipe for torrijas entails such thick slices of bread (2 inches thick to be exact), I made a decision to run some exams of my very own simply to make it possible for oven-dried bread would nonetheless reduce it.
Traditionally, torrijas, similar to ache perdu, was a dish born out of necessity and frugality—leftover stale bread was saved from getting tossed away by soaking it in milk or wine, coating with eggs, cooking it, after which sweetening with sugar or honey. Torrijas are historically made through the semana santa, the holy week at Easter time, and whereas its affiliation with the vacation is just not fully clear, Marti Buckley explains that some theorize that it was a manner to make use of up an abundance of bread baked throughout Lent. The spiritual connection to torrijas could also be shrouded in thriller, however we will determine if in fashionable instances it ought to nonetheless be made with stale bread.
I ran a aspect by aspect check with items of three-day-old bread that I staled on a wire rack in opposition to a one-day-old loaf that I reduce into items the day of testing and dried within the oven. The items began with the identical weight, and had been soaked in one-minute intervals, with their weights recorded after every interval. As you may see within the images above, the stale bread initially soaked up way more of the custard base than the oven, however over the course of some minutes these numbers evened out. There’s solely a lot liquid {that a} piece of bread can take in. So in case you have stale bread, use it, however if you happen to simply have a recent loaf of pullman, there is not any want to attend for days for it to undergo the retrogradation cycle. Pop it in a low oven to dry it out and also you’re good to go.
One word: As a result of recent, oven-dried bread is not really staled however simply frivolously dehydrated, it does find yourself extra delicate after soaking. I needed to be very cautious eradicating the 1-day-old piece of bread from the custard base, whereas the 3-day-old bread was barely simpler to maneuver. In both case, for these thick slabs of torrija, you wish to push the soaking time to the restrict in order to attain that pudding consistency on the heart. After soaking, I would like my torrija bread to be like me on the finish of 2020: barely holding it collectively.
The Sauce Is Within the Soaking Liquid
As Kristina famous in her current treatise on pastry cream, there’s lots of overlap within the custard prolonged universe. Mix dairy, eggs, and sugar and you’ve got a base for soaking bread for French toast. Gently warmth that base till the egg proteins denature and coagulate and you’ve got pourable crème anglaise. Chill, churn, and freeze that combination and you’ve got made ice cream. Or add starch and prepare dinner to make pastry cream. On this case, I wished a sauce to pair with the torrijas, so crème anglaise was the secret.
After soaking oven-dried items of bread for torrijas, I merely take the leftover custard base and gently warmth it to 175°F, till the yolks have thickened the sauce to a spoon-coating consistency. It is slightly extra work than your normal weekend French toast, however this no-waste method rewards you with a wealthy and silky sauce for a pull-out-all-the-stops torrijas that reaches show-stopping dessert heights. Foam not included.