Pancake Tuesday Can I say: Baked French Toast

A wonderful recipe for Baked French Toast from Mormon Mavens in the Kitchen website. I wanted to start posting my pancake Tuesday recipes but I really wanted and needed this french toast recipe.

We served it to our guests who stayed with us. They are part of the Phoenix Boys Choir. What a treat to have such polite young men stay with us.

Baked French Toast 

Ingredients:
1 loaf sourdough bread (I used Pepperidge Farm, 1.5 pound loaf)
8 eggs
2 cups milk (I used 1%)
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. vanilla

Topping:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1 stick cold butter, cut into pieces (1/4 lb.)

1.  Grease a 9x13 pan with butter.  Tear bread into bite-size chunks and place evenly in the pan.
2.  Mix together the eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla.  Pour evenly over bread.  Cover tightly and store in the fridge for several hours (I put mine in overnight....it was about 12 hours).
3.  In a medium bowl mix together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt.  Cut in the butter with a pastry blender until it all looks nice and crumbly (like small pebbles, according to P-Dub).  Place in a ziploc bag and put in fridge.
4.  When ready to bake, take pan and bag out of fridge.  Remove wrap and evenly sprinkle the crumb mixture over the top.  Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees (or 45 minutes if you like it more soft and pudding-like).

Notes from Mormon Mavens Website:
Update:  IMPORTANT!!!!!!!  You must use a dense bread or this dish will turn out soggy.  After getting a few comments below about soggy outcomes, I figured I'd better make sure you understand that.  You can't use regular ol' sandwich bread because it will NOT soak up the egg mixture!  I highly recommend starting with the bread listed in the ingredients above as this has ALWAYS turned out perfectly for me.

• You can serve with syrup, but we made a quick glaze with powdered sugar and milk.  Delish!
• If you don't have brown sugar, mix 1/2 Tbsp. molasses with 1/2 cup sugar until well blended.
• Like I said, you can bake it for less time if you like it softer, but I love how the top gets crispy when it's baked for an hour.  The underneath part is still somewhat soft.  One hour in my 350-oven was just right.
• The directions said to scoop out, but I wanted to be able to control the portions so I cut it into 12 servings (they were large, and this is rich, so you could serve other breakfast dishes and use this as more of a side dish and get 24 servings).
• If you have a hot oven, cover the dish with foil for the last 15 minutes or so if you notice that it's starting to get too brown (I have never had to do this, though).
• If you don't have a pastry cutter, use two knives moving away from each other to cut in the butter for the topping.  Do NOT use a fork to mash!  It will be a globby mess!