Wentelteefjes (Dutch French Toast)
Wentelteefjes
The Dutch way with stale bread: slices soaked in spiced egg and milk, fried gold in butter, and dusted with cinnamon sugar. Thrift turned into breakfast.
IBread & the Broodmaaltijd- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 12 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Beginner
Wentelteefjes are what a thrifty kitchen does with yesterday's bread: soak the tired slices in spiced egg and milk, fry them gold in butter, and shower them with cinnamon sugar until they taste like a treat rather than a rescue. It is the Dutch cousin of French toast and pain perdu, and like them it began as a way to waste nothing.
The dish is genuinely old. Recipes for bread soaked in egg and fried appear across medieval Europe, and Dutch versions are recorded from the late Middle Ages onward. That shows how universal the impulse was to redeem stale bread when grain was precious and nothing was thrown away. The name, from wentelen, "to turn over," simply describes the flip of the slice in the pan.
Old bread, better toast
The counterintuitive rule of wentelteefjes is that fresher is worse. Dry, day-old bread drinks up the custard and still holds together when you turn it; fresh bread saturates too fast and collapses into a wet paste. A thick slice of slightly stale white loaf, given a minute or two in the bath, comes out custard-soaked to the middle yet firm enough to crisp.
The magic is in the contrast: a lightly crisp, buttery crust giving way to a spiced centre as soft as pudding.
Cinnamon sugar, applied hot
Fry the slices in real butter, which browns the surface and carries flavour that oil cannot, and dust them with cinnamon sugar the moment they leave the pan so it melts and clings. Eat them for breakfast, for a weekend lunch, or as an after-school snack, with nothing more than the sugar, or with a thread of dark stroop or a spoonful of apple compote for a Sunday version.
“Stale bread is the point here, not a compromise. Dry slices soak up the custard without turning to mush in the pan.”
Ingredients
Serves 4
The soak
- 8 slicesstale white bread, day-old, thick cut
- 3eggs
- 300 mlwhole milk
- 2 tbspsugar
- 1 tspground cinnamon
- 1 pinchsalt
- 1 tspvanilla or lemon zest, optional
To fry and finish
- 40 gbutter
- 3 tbspsugar, for dusting
- 1 tspground cinnamon, for dusting
Method
- 1
Mix the custard
Whisk the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and vanilla or lemon zest in a wide, shallow dish until smooth. The bread wants a bath it can lie flat in, so the custard soaks evenly through each slice.
- 2
Soak the bread
Lay the slices in the custard and leave them to drink it in, a minute or two each side for day-old bread, longer if it is very dry. It should be saturated to the centre but not falling apart; stale bread holds far better than fresh.
- 3
Fry in butter
Melt butter in a frying pan over medium heat until it foams. Fry the soaked slices, without crowding, for 2–3 minutes a side until deep golden and set, the custard cooked through and the surface lightly crisp.
- 4
Dust and serve
Mix the finishing sugar and cinnamon and dust the hot wentelteefjes generously on both sides so it clings. Serve at once, plain, with a drizzle of stroop, or with a spoon of apple compote alongside.
Building the bread meal
The Dutch lunch is a spread, not a dish — bread and a parade of toppings.
- Jonge & belegen kaas, young and aged Gouda, sliced thin
- Hagelslag, chocolate sprinkles for the sweet slice
- Boiled egg & ham, the savoury half of the board
- Karnemelk, a glass of cold buttermilk
Questions from the kitchen
Why use stale bread instead of fresh?+
Dry bread absorbs the egg-and-milk custard deeply while keeping its structure. Fresh bread turns soggy and can break apart when you turn it in the pan.
What does "wentelteefje" mean?+
The name comes from wentelen, to turn or flip over, a reference to turning the slices in the pan. It is an old, affectionate diminutive.
Sweet or savoury?+
Classic wentelteefjes are sweet, dusted with cinnamon sugar. Older recipes were sometimes plainer, and you can leave out the sugar for a less sweet version.
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