Cinnamon French Toast Sticks

Day-old brioche absorbs custard without falling apart. Don't soak too long or sticks will be soggy. Medium heat is key - too hot and outside burns before inside cooks. Keeping finished sticks on wire rack prevents them from getting soggy on the bottom.

Cinnamon and French toast each carry histories that begin thousands of years before they shared a plate. Cinnamon — derived from the inner bark of Cinnamomum verum, a tree native to Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon — is one of the oldest traded spices in human history. Britannica documents the earliest written references in Chinese texts dating to around 2700 BCE. Ancient Egyptians used cinnamon in the embalming process and valued it as a rare import; it is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in Exodus as one of the ingredients in the sacred anointing oil. For centuries Arab traders dominated the cinnamon trade and concealed the spice's source from European buyers, embellishing its origins with elaborate legends of dangerous birds and distant kingdoms to justify its extraordinary price. The Portuguese explorer Lourenço de Almeida reached Ceylon in 1505 and the Portuguese established a cinnamon monopoly that persisted until the Dutch displaced them in the 1650s. The bread preparation now called French toast has an equally long lineage. A 4th–5th century version of the Apicius Roman cookbook contains a recipe soaking bread in milk and topping it with honey — a precursor to the dish. The French chef Guillaume Taillevent presented a recipe for tostées dorées (golden toasts) with eggs and sugar in Le Viandier around 1300. A 14th-century German version carried the name Arme Ritter, meaning "poor knights," and by the 15th century English recipes for pain perdu — "lost bread," the name given to the French tradition of rescuing stale bread — were also in circulation. Pain perdu means exactly what it sounds like: bread that would otherwise be lost, transformed into something worth eating. Dusting that preparation with one of history's most coveted spices is a marriage of very old ideas.