Johnnie Bread or Bust

I got the inspiration to try Chrissy’s French toast recipe from the three loaves of Johnnie bread sitting on my counter after the wedding. What is Johnnie bread? Why do I have 3 loaves? What does it have to do with my recent wedding? So many questions. Lucky for you, I have all the answers.

Baking Johnnie bread was started by the Benedictine monks at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN in the 1800s. The loaf, made with a mix of wheat and rye flour, has been made daily ever since and is a staple in the cafeteria and the dorms. Spencer graduated from St. John’s University, a men’s college, while I graduated from the College of St. Benedict, its all women counterpart. The campuses are about a 10-minute bus ride apart. It is tradition for Bennie (a woman who graduated from St. Ben’s) – Johnnie (a man who graduated from St. John’s) couples to get married in the Abbey at St. John’s. So that’s exactly what we did. Cue that awkward moment when a church is prettier than you on your own wedding day.

We (along with our friends) have so many fond memories of eating the freshly baked bread with our favorite toppings (mine is peanut butter; Nutella is a close second) so we thought it would be fun to have some Johnnie bread and yummy toppings as a late-night snack at the wedding! Is there really even a better way to soak up free alcohol than with bread? I think not. However, we overestimated the amount of people that wanted to sober up with a little snack and had many, many loaves leftover.

Alright, enough about the bread. Let’s talk about how it gets lost (in the French language, French toast literally translates to lost bread). First of the all, the honey butter syrup? *kisses fingertips and tosses them into the air*. I make pancakes for Spencer every weekend cause I’m the best wife in the world and I think I am going to start serving this instead of maple syrup. At least every once in a while, that is. We are close enough to Canada that we can’t go too long without the good stuff. Speaking of which, not only does St. John’s makes some tasty bread, but they also collect sap and make their own maple syrup. Truly one of kind. The syrup is much more difficult to come by than the bread, though.

I’ve never been much of a topper (other than syrup) when it comes to French toast and other breakfast carbohydrates. We usually keep it simple and stick with buttermilk pancakes and maple syrup. Sometimes I’ll throw in blueberries in the summer or canned pumpkin in the fall if I have them. If I feel like getting real crazy, I will put in some chocolate chips. That’s a rarity. We occasionally have guests over during our weekly pancake endeavors and they might throw some peanut butter on there. That’s when we know things are getting really wild! This whipped ricotta topping was so new and rebellious to us it felt like we were doing hard drugs. I think I need to start going to whipped ricotta topping addicts anonymous.

The Johnnie bread was pre-sliced per our request so it was thinner than I wanted (and thinner than what Chrissy recommends) but I made it work. Spencer prefers thinner French toast anyways. It was also almost a week old at this point. Traditionally, you would use day old bread for French toast. But we are already metaphorically doing drugs at this point so what’s a few extra days of staleness?

I wanted to make “creamier, more custardy, and undercooked-in-a-good-way” French toast so I used pasteurized eggs for the mixture to keep my food safety concerns at bay. Chrissy really knows how to speak my language.

Spencer’s Reaction: “Holy Shit. This is the best French toast I have ever had. You should open a restaurant. I must have saved a bus full of children in a past life to be able to be married to you”. So no real insights into the food itself from this reaction but I think its safe to see he enjoyed it as much as I did! Now if you’ll excuse us, we will just be over here dipping graham crackers into the leftover whipped ricotta topping.