Torrijas
They look like French toast but differ on three counts. The bread is stale and thickly cut, not fresh. It soaks in infused milk alone rather than an egg and milk mixture, for a good half hour. And only then does it meet egg, which forms a sealed skin on the surface — that skin is what holds a saturated slice together during frying.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Infusing and cooling the milk 40 min
- Soaking 35 min
- Frying 25 min
- Syrup 10 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneInfuse the milk with peel and cinnamon
Bring the milk to a boil with the sugar, cinnamon stick and the lemon and orange peel, take it off the heat and leave covered for 20 minutes. Strain into a shallow dish and cool to lukewarm (about 20 minutes) — hot milk would reduce the slices to mush within minutes.
Ingredients: 12 pcs bread · 1000 ml milk · 120 g sugar · 1 pcs cinnamon · 1 pcs lemon · ½ pcs orange
Soak thick slices of stale bread
Lay the slices in a shallow dish and pour over the milk. Leave 30 minutes, turning once. The bread should soak right through while keeping its shape — slices of a very dense loaf may need a quarter of an hour longer, challah only a quarter of an hour. Fresh bread disintegrates immediately, which is why the recipe calls for at least two-day-old.
Ingredients: 12 pcs bread · 1000 ml milk · 120 g sugar · 1 pcs cinnamon · 1 pcs lemon · ½ pcs orange
Slices swollen but still intact.Lift them out carefully and drain
Lift the slices with a wide spatula, not a fork, and set them on a rack for 5 minutes. Excess milk has to drain off, or it dilutes the egg and the surface skin cannot set.
Ingredients: 12 pcs bread · 1000 ml milk · 120 g sugar · 1 pcs cinnamon · 1 pcs lemon · ½ pcs orange
Coat in egg immediately before frying
Dip each slice in beaten egg immediately before it goes into the pan, not earlier. The egg has to set on the surface within seconds and form the skin that holds the soaked bread together.
Ingredients: 4 pcs eggs · 400 ml olive oil
Egg only just before the pan, never in advance.Fry in olive oil, two minutes a side
Heat the olive oil in a pan of about 24 cm, about 1 cm deep, to 170°C, and fry in batches of 3–4 slices, 2 minutes a side — about 25 minutes in all. Turn with a spatula and drain the fried slices on kitchen paper. Olive oil, not a neutral one: it gives torrijas their characteristic faintly savoury note that balances the sweetness.
Ingredients: 4 pcs eggs · 400 ml olive oil
Oil about 1 cm deep, two minutes a side.Finish with honey syrup or cinnamon sugar
Bring the honey and water to the boil and simmer 5 minutes into a thin syrup, then pour it over the warm torrijas — or roll them while still hot in the sugar mixed with the ground cinnamon. Both are classic; the honey version is moister, the cinnamon one crisper.
Ingredients: 150 g honey · 80 ml water · 60 g sugar · 2 tsp cinnamon
Before you start
The bread matters
A thick, dense white loaf or brioche two days old is best. Sliced sandwich bread disintegrates and wholemeal dominates the flavour. In Spain a special pan de torrijas is sold — simply a very dense white loaf.
The wine version
In torrijas de vino, popular especially in Andalusia, the milk is replaced by wine with sugar and cinnamon — usually red, sometimes a sweet white. They come out bolder and distinctly more grown up.
Three days in the fridge
Torrijas are also good cold, and in Spain they are eaten throughout Holy Week. Keep them in the fridge for up to 3 days, in an airtight box layered with paper — reheated they lose their crispness, but cold they have a dense, custardy texture that has its admirers.
