This entry could also be titled, “What to Do with Undercooked Bread,” but this recipe would be great with just about any type of bread.  It is definitely a special event kind of food–a good choice for weekend brunches.  Before I get to the recipe, let me back up and and explain the undercooked sourdough.

Since April, I’ve had some stellar sourdough starter going. I’ve made sourdough starter in the past and it’s never been very vigorous. This stuff is different. I got some free starter from Carl’s Friends (just had to send in a self-addressed, stamped envelope) and it’s been bubbling away ever since.
I’ve made some kind of sourdough bread product approximately once a week. We’re talking pizza dough, injera, sourdough boules, Berkeley sourdough loaves (my favorite keep-on-hand-all-the-time-because-it’s-awesome bread), and I just pulled out some sourdough bahn mi-inspired loaves from the oven. I haven’t posted about this before because I’ve been following other people’s recipes relatively closely and haven’t gotten around to jotting down the changes and pointers that I would make for my own recipe.
But I have been experimenting. I have baked loves in a perforated French bread pan like this one, standard loaf pans, and on a cookie sheet. On the last batch before the bahn mi, I did one loaf on a sheet and one loaf in a loaf pan. We ate the one off the sheet first and saved the loaf in the pan on the counter. When we cut into the second one, we discovered that it was not fully baked along the bottom middle and there was quite a large cavity inside. I decided it would be destined for French toast, which would cook the uncooked part.
Bread cooked this way will be essentially steamed, a texture that made my sweetie pie think it was still uncooked. I liked it, but I’m a big fan of steamed bread. If you need to rescue your undercooked bread by making French toast and you’ve got very dense bread, I’d suggest slicing it thinly. Here’s how I did it. Strawberry spoon fruit optional. I’d do it on purpose again, for a special treat and since it made so much, I’ll be able to see how it does reheated from frozen.

 

 

Coating Ingredients
1 banana
¾ cup hemp milk (or unsweetened milk of your choice)
1 teaspoon cake seasoning
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 tablespoon flax seeds (doesn’t matter if it’s ground or whole because it’s going in the blender)

Other Ingredients
1 loaf of bread, thinly sliced
2 cups panko crumbs (or as needed)
Oil to coat frying pan.

Optional
Strawberry spoon fruit or other toppings

Blend coating ingredients until smooth. Put enough oil in large flat-bottomed frying pan to coat bottom. Preheat over medium high. Pour some of coating into shallow bowl, replenish as needed. Pour enough panko crumbs into another shallow bowl to cover bottom of bowl, replenish as needed. Dip one slice of bread at a time into coating, flip and make sure it’s covered, let sit about 30 seconds. Remove from coating bowl, let excess drip off, transfer to other bowl and coat with panko. Transfer to large clean plate. Once you have four slices (or however many will fit in your pan) ready, carefully place them in preheated pan. Cook with lid on for 4 minutes per side (or until golden brown). On final side, cook an additional 2 minutes with lid off. Cooking with lid on may not be necessary if you’re not trying to steam undercooked bread.  Serve topped with strawberry spoon fruit.