Baked French Toast

This is an easy but festive breakfast/brunch meal to serve a crowd. Make the most of our local milk and eggs! To make the morning assembly easy, slice the bread and combine the other ingredients in a bowl the night before and store in the fridge.

This is fantastic with blueberry-strawberry sauce, but also great with maple syrup. This recipe is adapted from on in Didi Emmons's Vegetarian Planet.

Update, 9/15/12: I have made this with other types of bread with great success.  Any moderately soft loaf will do, and whole grain bread works fine.  I made this once with whole wheat cranberry walnut bread and it was fantastic.  Oatmeal bread is good too, as is buttermilk wheat.  Feel free to experiment, especially if you prefer something with some whole grain in it.

5 eggs, beaten
4 cups milk (I used a combination of whole and skim, but use whatever you have)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 baguette in 1-inch slices (about 24 slices), preferably slightly stale

Butter a 10x15-inch baking pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in a bowl.

Lay the bread slices out in the baking pan, overlapping slightly. Pour the custard mixture over it. If you have time, let it soak for 30 minutes or so before baking. Bake for about 35 minutes, until custard is set.

Serve with maple syrup, butter, and/or fruit sauce.

Serves about 6.