Complex Numbers

That's Not Kosher!

And now for something completely different... a recipe

(And an actual emoticon)

Merit Badge Mini-Contest below!

https://www.thekitchn.com/challah-french-toast-264194

Recipe: Best-Ever Challah French Toast

This came up from my list at random, but it's serendipitous because not only is it Shabbat right now (aka the Sabbath, which of course happens every week) but it's also Sukkot, a harvest festival that only comes 'round once a year, like most harvest festivals. It's kind of like the Jewish version of Oktoberfest, with less beer and more freezing your ass off outside at night. But with food.

Couple of things to start off.

Food as Cultural Appropriation: Get the fuck out of here with that shit. Eat what you like. And I can practically guarantee you that if you like bread, you'll like challah. Besides, I bet that unless you have dietary crap going on, you've already eaten bagels, pastrami sandwiches, and latkes. Anyway, this comes from my ancestral culture and I give you permission.

Pronunciation: Since the etymology of the name is Hebrew, it's pronounced with a sound we don't have in English. This is rendered as "ch." Now, "ch" can be pronounced like in chop, or like in Charlotte, or, and this is the important one here, like in loch or chutzpah. You make the sound by basically half-clearing your throat. If you really, really can't make the sound, then pronouncing it with a hard "k" is barely acceptable, though that will out you as a goy. But if I can learn how to pronounce a French "r," you can pronounce the Hebrew "ch." Might take some practice, though.

One final thing before we get on to this delicious and probably addictive recipe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challah

There. Now you know more than I do about this tasty bread.

Growing up, challah French toast was the only French toast I knew.

Same here, although unlike the author, my parents couldn't cook to save their lives. But with enough sugar, when you're a kid, who cares?

We would slather softened butter over thick slices of fresh challah on Friday night for Shabbat, and my dad would use the rest of the loaf to make mile-high stacks of French toast the next morning...

You know how I know the author doesn't come from an Orthodox family?

It wasn’t until a diner served me French toast made with a piece of limp wheat sandwich bread that I realized how spoiled I had been.

Seriously, it's possible to make decent French toast with other breads, but some of the crap that passes itself off as French toast is actually crap. (French toast, by the way, isn't all that French and actually predates what we now know as France -- but "Gaulish Bread" just doesn't have the ring to it. I hear that in actual France, it's called pain perdu, or "lost bread.")

Trust me, once you’ve had challah French toast, you’ll realize there’s no other way to eat it.

This is truth incarnate. So beware: you will be spoiled by this, just like I can no longer drink cheap-ass American adjunct light beer.

3 Steps for the Absolute Best Challah French Toast

And really, this stuff is dead easy to create. Even I can be arsed to whip up a batch from time to time, and I'm the laziest imaginable cook.

1. Cut thick slices of bread, then dry them out in the oven.

This is ideal, yes, but a lot of times the reason you're making French toast is you have bread that's going stale and needs to be eaten before it becomes duck chow or hockey pucks. And stale bread may not need the oven treatment. You probably know better than I do whether to do this step or not. I usually just use the stale bread.

2. Use full-fat dairy for the very best custard.

Seriously, if you're already committed to French toast, the paltry extra calories you get from using actual milk instead of watery skim milk won't make a thimbleful of difference.

3. Fry the French toast in butter, not oil.

I approve of this message.

The article ends with the actual recipe, which seems like a big block of text but is actually just padded for rank beginners so they don't make rookie mistakes like letting the butter (or the toast itself) burn.

For maximum sacrilege, I recommend serving with a heap of bacon strips. Unless you're actually Jewish, I promise this won't piss off God. The pig might not be very happy about it, though.

Besides, I once overheard some idiot complaining about cultural appropriation while chomping down on a bacon, egg and cheese bagel. Irony is utterly lost on some people.

Merit Badge Mini-Contest!

And hey, now that it's fully October and I'm feeling better than I was yesterday, tell me about your favorite breakfast food in a comment below. The one that makes me the hungriest gets its chef de cuisine a Merit Badge. As always, you have until the end of the day today, October 3, WDC time.