Beyond Bread: Explore the World of French Toast Without the Carbs!

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“I don’t mean to brag, I don’t mean to boast, but I’m intercontinental when I eat French toast.” — Mike D.

French toast is one of these foods you can cook using so many recipes while still retaining the essence of French toast. So many variable ingredients can go into making a classic French toast. One thing they all have in common, though, is bread.

Bread is the original ingredient in French toast and most of the additions are to make that bread taste better, saltier, or sweeter. However, what if you are craving French toast but trying to avoid those extra carbs you find in bread?

Is it even possible to have French toast without bread? If so, how to make French toast without bread?

To make French toast without bread, you’ll need to replace bread with another ingredient. Our main recipe will use oatmeal. Since oatmeal is more granular than bread and can’t hold itself together, the final appearance may not be identical to bread-based French toast.

We’ll also show you how to make breadless French toast with eggs only. To be even more diverse, we’ll show you how to replace bread with cauliflower or eggplant!

How to Make French Toast Without Bread? (The Oatmeal Classic)

As we just mentioned earlier, oatmeal will be the heart of your French toast and it will replace the high-carb of bread with a healthy (yet tasty) substitute. In case you haven’t already concluded, a French toast without bread is a great vegan breakfast option.

Before we go further ahead, it might be worth checking the original classic French toast recipe. This will help you understand the difference in the cooking methods we’re about to show you.

You’re probably already familiar with the original recipe so we won’t get into it too much. We’ll go right to our breadless French toast recipe, let’s start with the ingredients.

Breadless French Toast Ingredients

You’ll need two sets of ingredients. The first set is to make the body of the French toast, the second set is for the custard.

Ingredients of the French Toast Body

• 1 ½ cups of rolled oats (4.7 ounces of rolled oats)
• ¼ teaspoon of pink salt
• 2 ¼ cups of water (18 ounces of water)

Ingredients of the Custard

• ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
• ½ cup of canned coconut milk (4 ounces of milk)
• ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon of maple syrup
• ⅛ cups of ground nutmeg (1 ounce of ground nutmeg)
• 4 tablespoons of chickpea flour

Breadless French Toast Recipe

We’ll cook our breadless French toast over two phases. We start by cooking the oatmeal.

Cooking the Oatmeal

1. Bring over a cooking pot and mix the rolled oats with water and the pink salt
2. Mix the ingredients together using a large spoon
3. Heat the mixture until it the water starts to boil
4. Once the mixture boils, reduce the cooking temperature slightly to simmer your mixture. Simmering is keeping the temperature slightly below the boiling temperature
5. Keep simmering until the oats absorb all the water in the cooking pot. This should take around 5 minutes
6. Bring over a small baking tray then cover it with parchment paper
7. Spread your cooked oatmeal over the parchment paper and use a spoon to spread the oatmeal over the whole tray
8. Place your baking tray inside the refrigerator overnight. If you don’t want to wait that long, you may take it out after at least 2 hours

Tips to Keep In Mind While Cooking the Oatmeal

• The oatmeal should absorb all the water you’ve added to the pot. If you end up with some residual water after 5 minutes, then you’ve added too much water
• Consistency-wise, the oats should have an ‘al dente’ texture. It means that your oats shouldn’t be entirely limp. The oats should still be slightly solid
• While spreading the cooked oatmeal in the cooking pot, make sure that you reach a thickness of half an inch. That’s approximately how thick a toast should be

Custard Recipe

1. Before you begin making your custard, make sure that your oatmeal has already stayed in the fridge long enough. You don’t want to make the custard and then put it aside until the oatmeal is ready
2. Mix your custard ingredients together and keep stirring until the mixture is homogeneous
3. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish. It’s now ready

Cooking the Breadless French Toast

1. Take your oatmeal out of the refrigerator and slice it into even square-shaped pieces
2. The oatmeal pieces should be firm enough to be taken out of the baking tray without falling apart, take them out and place them inside the custard mixture
3. Flip the oatmeal slices in the custard and make sure that they’re thoroughly covered with it

4. At this point, it’s a matter of frying your oatmeal French toast slices. Since we’re going vegan, we’ll use vegan butter to fry our oatmeals
5. You’ll need 3 minutes of frying on each side to reach the golden texture of the classic French toast
6. Take your golden French toast from the frying pan and place them on a baking sheet
7. Put your French toast in the oven for 10 minutes at 375°F. This step will make your French toast extra crispy.
8. Now your low-carb, breadless French toast is ready to serve

This breadless French toast recipe contains 77 kcal and 11 grams of carbohydrates.

How to Make French Toast Without Bread or Oatmeal (Sweet Omelet Recipe)

What if you wanted to eat your French toast without bread or anything that resembles it? Or simply, what if you didn’t want to wait for the oats to come out of the fridge?

We have another low-carb option for you; a sweet omelet!

Sweet omelet is another breadless French toast option that’s…not exactly vegan since it contains eggs. It’s, however, still very low in carbs.

This recipe should take you roughly 15 minutes to finish from start to end. It’s great when you want a healthy breakfast in a hurry.

Ingredients

• 3 large eggs or 4 small eggs
• ½ cup of milk
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of flour (you can use gluten-free flour if you like)

Cooking the Sweet Omelet

1. Crack open your eggs in a medium-sized bowl. Mix the eggs with milk, sugar, and flour.
2. Stir the mixture for 30-60 seconds until it becomes homogeneous.
3. Bring a frying pan and brush it with some coconut oil or vegan butter. You can use normal oil if you feel like but we’re assuming that you’re choosing healthier options
4. Pour your mixture into the pan and make sure that it’s well-spread across the entire surface, then cover it with a lid
5. Keep cooking the mixture for around 7 minutes on medium or 10 minutes on low. If you know how to cook an omelet, you’ll quickly sense when it’s ready without having to rely on a timer
6. Once you’re done cooking, remove the lid and place the omelet on a large plate. It’s ready to be served with any additions you need.

This breadless French toast recipe contains 189 kcal and 12 grams of carbohydrates.

How to Make French Toast With Cauliflower

What’s going on here?! A French toast with cauliflower? Yes, you read that right. Here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients

• 1 head of cauliflower
• ½ cup of cheddar cheese
• 1 large egg or 2 small eggs
• ¼ tablespoon of salt

Cooking the Breadless Cauliflower French Toast

1. The first thing you need to do to save time is preheating your oven to 400°F
2. Now, chop your cauliflower head into small pieces that can fit inside a food processor
3. Grind the chopped cauliflower until it reaches a consistency similar to that of rice
4. Bring a medium-sized bowl and crack your egg open inside it. Stir until the egg yolk turns into a homogenous yellow liquid
5. Add your salt and your cheddar cheese to the mix and stir again for 30 seconds
6. Now add the processed cauliflower to the mix and stir slowly and carefully. The mixture will be very thick and hard to stir, but keep stirring it until it mixes well
7. The mixture should be thick enough to handle by hand. Divide the mixture into 6 equal servings
8. Use your hands to give each serving the familiar square shape of the French toast. You can shape them into any figure you like, but keep the thickness between ¼ and ½ of an inch
9. Place your servings on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper then head over to your preheated oven
10. Bake until you reach the classic golden brown texture of the French toast. That should take you anywhere between 5–10 minutes
11. Take your French toast out of the oven and serve it with any topping you love

How to Make French Toast With Eggplant

We’ll finish our list with another unexpected replacement for bread; eggplant! Let’s jump to the ingredients right away.

Ingredients

• 1 eggplant
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons of milk
• ½ tablespoon of vanilla extract
• ¼ tablespoon of cinnamon
• Unrefined salt for sprinkling

Cooking the Breadless Eggplant French Toast

Eggplant has a strong flavor that can throw you off if you don’t get rid of it before cooking it. Follow these steps to learn how to cook the eggplant French toast:

1. Peel the eggplant and then cut into slices that are ¼ or ½ inch thick
2. Sprinkle the slices with salt and place them on a colander or a strainer.
3. Place them aside for 30 minutes until they ooze out a brownish liquid. That escaping liquid will reduce the strong taste of the eggplant later on
4. After 30 minutes, rinse the eggplant slices and pat them dry using a clean towel or some paper towels
5. Now crack open your 2 eggs in a medium-sized bowl and whisk them well
6. Add your cinnamon, vanilla extract, and milk portions into the mix and whisk again until it becomes homogeneous
7. Pierce the eggplant slices with a fork to allow for better absorption
8. Now, dunk the eggplant slices in your mixture until they’re well-soaked with it
9. Take your egg-covered eggplant slices and cook them in a frying pan
10. Again, you can use normal oil if you like, but it’s preferred to stick with olive oil or vegan butter to keep the healthy theme going

FAQs

Is French toast a nutritious meal?

The traditional bread-based French toast is a highly nutritious meal. However, it contains a high amount of saturated fat and can make you put on weight quickly. Breadless French toast recipes are considered a more healthy approach to the meal with less carbs and fats.

Is there a vegan French toast?

French toast that’s prepared with oatmeal, water, and salt is 100% vegan. You should be careful not to use full-cream milk or eggs while making the custard, though. Substitute these ingredients with coconut milk, vanilla extract, and ground cinnamon.

Can I eat French toast every day?

It’s not recommended to eat a particular type of food every day and French toast is no exception. You’ll either end up overfilling your body with a certain nutrient or depriving it of one. Additionally, even vegan French toast can stack your carbs intake quickly if you don’t watch it.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it, how to make French toast without bread? Use eggs, oatmeal, cauliflower, or eggplant.

The essence of the French toast remains the same. You prepare bread (or any of the substitutes) and cover it with a mixture then you fry it.

The mixture is what decides the taste and the nature of your final result. If you prefer to have an all-vegan French toast, go ahead and use our oatmeal recipe. We even replaced the milk with coconut milk.

If you’re not a vegan but still willing to cut down on those carbs, you can try our eggplant and cauliflower recipes.

If you want something a bit sweet, try our sweet omelet recipe. You’ll love it.

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