For those with a sweet tooth, a perfect day starts with a French toast breakfast. This morning treat is often associated with sweet flavors because it’s usually dripping in sweet syrup and butter. Others also love topping it with fresh fruits, typically berries.
However, French toast can be a star of savory meals, too! It goes great with sausages, patties, mushrooms, and more. Thus, read this article to find out great ideas about what to serve with French toast and explore the range of sweet and savory flavors a French toast breakfast can have.
1. Crispy Air Fryer Bacon
The simplest way to make a savory meal out of French toast is to pair it with crispy, greasy, and tasty bacon. Bacon is an excellent choice because kids and adults love it. Plus, there are many ways to cook it: pan, oven, or, in this case, air fryer. You achieve the usual crispiness by air-frying bacon but with much less oil.
2. Smoked Salmon
Bagel with smoked salmon is a classic tandem, but you can also swap the bagel for some sweet French toast. The smoky, salty flavors of the fish complement well the sweetness and creaminess of the French toast. You can make your smoked salmon at home if you have a salmon filet, kosher salt, brown sugar, wood chips or pellets, and a smoker.
3. Sausage Patties
French toast is excellent with sausage, whether as a patty or a string of links. However, if you’re more interested in making the former, this recipe will be a good guide! It ensures the patties come out delicious and juicy and takes only 15 minutes to complete. Ingredients are simple and easy to find, and you can change the spices depending on your preferences.
4. Poached Eggs
Although French toast is made with eggs, it wouldn’t hurt to have just a bit more for breakfast. Thus, consider topping your flavorful bread with these poached eggs, which are perfectly oozy, yellow, and fresh. If you have more time, you can elevate the whole affair by making eggs benedict, with French toast replacing the usual English muffins!
5. Spinach Quiche
If poached eggs are too runny for your taste, you may prefer this more solid French spinach quiche. Quiche is like tart, custard, and pie all in one. That’s because it’s made by filling a deep pie crust with browned shallots, Gruyere cheese, spinach, and an egg mixture. It’s like an upgraded scrambled egg!
6. Sauteed Mushrooms with Garlic
Put a hold on that syrup and butter! Instead, try something new by topping your French toast with these sauteed mushrooms with garlic. In doing so, you get a complexly delicious breakfast as you combine the French toast’s sweetness and the mushrooms’ umami. This recipe is a quick fix, too – it takes only 13 minutes to prep and cook!
7. Berry Fruit Salad
Fresh berries are a classic topping for French toast. But if you’re hosting a relatively large crowd, make this berry fruit salad, as you can put a bowl of it in the center, and people can get as much as they want. This berry salad has everything you could ask for: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries, all tossed in honey, lime juice, and poppy seeds.
8. Cinnamon Apples
If you prefer deeper, sweeter flavors – combined with a tantalizing aroma – make these cinnamon apples and serve them as toppings for your French toast. They’re crisp-tender, moist, and delicious, with that distinct cinnamon, buttery, and caramelized flavors. Depending on the types of apples you use, you’ll also get a hint of tartness, which makes the experience more complex.
9. Caramelized Cinnamon-Spiced Pears
These caramelized pears are great on top of French toast. They’re tender and juicy and have a unique hint of spiciness. The golden brown color is also gorgeous to behold, which you can achieve within 8 minutes only! Besides the pears and cinnamon, all you need to get that look and flavor are butter or oil, maple syrup or brown sugar, and lemon juice.
10. Bananas Foster
Fresh banana slices and caramelized bananas are often recommended as French toast toppings. But if you want more decadent and layered flavors, go for bananas foster. It has bananas and caramelized flavors, but there’s also rum, vanilla, cinnamon, butter, and walnuts. The sauce is fantastic, the fruit is tender, and you can put this on top of the French toast with or without ice cream!
11. Apple Butter
Are you tired of the usual dairy butter? Swap that for this rich and delectable apple butter, and your French toast tastes like fall. This thick condiment is made from soft and sweet apples, brown and granulated sugar, cinnamon, salt, cloves, and vanilla. It may look like a sauce because the apples are pureed until smooth, but it has a more spreadable consistency.
12. Blueberry Sauce
You usually have blueberries as whole fruits on top of your French toast. But have you considered pouring them as a sauce instead? This blueberry sauce will change the way you have your breakfast. It’s rich and sweet, and the tangy flavor is intense and distinct. Moreover, it isn’t completely smooth, so you get chewy chunks of berries mixed with the thick sauce.
13. Simple Fruit Compote
The blueberry sauce does an excellent job of intensifying the blueberry taste, but if you want more flavors, make this simple fruit compote instead. It’s less runny, much thicker, and chunkier than sauce. Still, the flavors are phenomenal – a marriage of tartness, sweetness, and fruitiness. This recipe uses strawberries and cherries, but you can choose your duo.
14. Strawberry Yogurt
Yogurt, along with French toast, is a healthy, creamy, and delicious way to start your day. While you quickly grab this one at a store, nothing beats the freshness and overall quality of homemade. Also, it isn’t much extra effort – you’ll need only five minutes, a blender, and four essential ingredients: plain yogurt, strawberries, lemon juice, and vanilla.
