Big Flavors from a Restaurant Kitchen Volume 8: Wobble Café’s Pain Perdu

This is part 2 of a feature on my delicious experience with Chef Beylka Krupp at Wobble Café in Ossining, New York. You can find part 1 here.

The Pain Perdu is one of my favorite menu items at Wobble Café. It’s deliciously decadent, and there is a different flavor combination almost every day.

This stuffed French toast can be filled with your favorite flavors – the sky (and your imagination) is the limit!

We had some homemade peach preserves from one of my husband’s co-workers (thanks, Gregory!), so I decided to whip that into my cream cheese and garnish it with pomegranate seeds for my Pain Perdu experiment. I used 8 ounces of Neufchâtel cheese (since it’s a little lighter than cream cheese) and 4 tablespoons of the peach preserves.

First things first, you need to hollow out some pieces of baguette. I found that 1 full baguette was able to be sliced into 4 portions.

I found that an iced tea spoon worked beautifully to stuff the filling into the hollowed out baguette.

Make sure you leave a little bit of bread at the end so the filling doesn’t leak out, and save the pieces you remove, since they’ll be used to plug the hole back up after your bread is stuffed.

Note that at the restaurant, the heat from their griddle allows them to use 2 slices of baguette with the filling spread between. The filling gets warm while the bread gets golden brown and doesn’t overcook. But for home cooking, Beylka suggests stuffing the bread with this method. It works out beautifully and explains why the previous times we’ve tried the sandwich method, our filling gets too melty and runny.

Beylka suggests using your favorite French toast mixture to soak your stuffed baguette pieces. I used this recipe, since it’s the one we love in my house.

Next, you need to brown the pieces of baguette all around, starting with the capped end, to get a nice seal.

I was able to do 4 at once in my oval non-stick skillet – I love that thing so much! It takes a little patience to brown these on all sides, but it’s well worth the time.

To serve these beauties, dust them with powdered sugar and drizzle with maple syrup before diving in!

My peach pomegranate combo worked out really well, and I loved the pop of color that the garnish added. I love that this can be flavored in so many different ways, depending on your mood, what’s in your kitchen or available at the local market, etc.

I asked Beylka what her favorite filling combinations are, since Wobble Café changes it up daily with seasonal specials, and she shared these suggestions:

• dried pineapple with crystalized ginger
  

• dried blueberry with cardamom

• any jam or preserve one makes themselves

• dried strawberry with fresh cracked pepper

• brandied cherry with chocolate chips

I’m looking forward to trying out some of these combos soon!

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Big Flavors from a Restaurant Kitchen Volume 8: Wobble Café’s Pain Perdu

Serves 4

This stuffed French toast can be filled with your favorite flavors - the sky (and your imagination) is the limit!

Ingredients

1 baguette (I used a full one, cut into 4 equal lengths)

French toast batter (I used this recipe)

Filling of choice (see notes below - I used 4 ounces peach preserves whipped with 8 ounces room temperature cream cheese)

1 tablespoon mild flavored cooking oil per serving (I used 4 tablespoons sunflower oil for 4 servings)

Powdered sugar, for serving

Pure maple syrup, for serving

Instructions

1. Slice a 4 inch hunk off of a baguette.
2. Scoop out the center, reserving the scooped out pieces.
3. Fill with your favorite flavor of stuffing leaving a tiny space to cap it. (whip or purchase whipped cream cheese and allow to come to room temp and stir powdered sugar, cordial, dried or fresh fruit, chocolate chips, jam, preserves, spices, etc. the sky is the limit!!!)
4. Put the reserved pieces of baguette from the scooping over the filling and push in gently to cap the filling.
5. Soak in your favorite recipe for French toast batter for 5 minutes.
6. Heat your favorite skillet or sauté pan with one tablespoon of mild flavored cooking oil.
7. Remove perdu from batter and allow excess to drop back into soaking pan.
8. Place in hot pan with the cap side down FIRST.
9. Rotate as each side fries to a golden brown.
10. Plate and serve.

Notes

Recipe by Beylka Krupp of Wobble Café

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