Pioneer Woman's Baked French Toast

While I'm having a crafting standstill my baking continues.  I've tried numerous French toast casserole recipes and none of them have turned out too well.  They are either mushy, overcooked, or not the right flavors to suit me. 

I got the Pioneer Woman's Holiday cookbook for Christmas this past year and was so excited to start cooking out of it.  My mom works for the school system and the cooks had a bag full of thick bread heals they were going to throw away.  Naturally my mom thought I could probably do something with them.  Originally I was going to make bread crumbs but decided I didn't want to take the time to blend them up in 20 different batches using my Magic Bullet.  That's when I thought of making a French toast casserole recipe with them.  I turned to the holiday cookbook because I'd remembered seeing a couple different breakfast casserole recipes and since Ree hasn't disappointed me yet with her tasty recipes I thought I had a good chance of this one turning out. 

Even so I only made an 8x8 dish instead of 9x13, for 2 reasons: 1. in case it turned out badly and then I wouldn't have a full pan to throw away 2. I didn't want to use up 8 of my eggs since I only had a little less than 2 dozen to last me a couple weeks before I go grocery shopping again.


4 eggs
1 1/4c milk
1/4c sugar
1T vanilla (I don't measure vanilla so I just dumped some in)
Crusty bread (enough to fill an 8x8 baking dish)

Topping
1/4c margarine-cold and cut into pieces
1/4c flour
1/4c brown sugar-packed
1/2t cinnamon
couple shakes of nutmeg
couple shakes of salt

*whisk the eggs, milk, vanilla and sugar together.  Spray your baking dish liberally with PAM.  Tear your crusty bread into chunks and fill your baking dish.  Pour the egg/milk mixture over top.  In a medium bowl mix your topping ingredients together using a large fork or pastry cutter.  You want it to look like crumbs or chunks.  Sprinkle over the top of the bread.  Put in fridge overnight.  Bake in the morning at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.  Top with syrup.

 I let the bread heals dry out over night so they egg/milk mixture would soak into them and not make them a mushy mess.  I didn't have any cream so instead I used 1 1/4c 2% milk.  Other than that I followed the recipe except halving everything.   I made it last night and let it sit in the fridge.  If you do this just don't forget it's in there like I did.  I ate a bowl of cereal when I got out of the shower and then remembered I had made the casserole.  So, breakfast for lunch anyone?