1. Crack the eggs into a medium mixing bowl and whisk until creamy. Add vanilla, milk, and cinnamon. Whisk again until the mixture has a pale yellow color and the cinnamon is blended.

2. For best results, power on a griddle and preheat to 350°F. If using a stovetop pan, preheat and cook at medium heat. Lightly grease either with butter or cooking oil.

3. Place each bread slice in the egg mixture and let soak for approximately 2 seconds on each side before setting it down on top of the griddle or pan.

4. Using a spatula, intermittently check and flip each slice until golden brown on both sides. Serve immediately with syrup.

The first thought that comes to mind about making French toast is how easy it is, and, among other things, how great it smells! The warm, wafting aroma that arises during the cooking process is surely something to keep the chef anxiously checking the undersides of the bread slices in palpable anticipation, only interrupted by the occasional stomach rumble. It’s a dish that admittedly can cause a headache by requiring a lot of manual effort to check the doneness of each slice when cooking. If anything, though, it’s the perfect dish for an inexperienced chef due to the back and forth nature of intermittently checking the bread slices for shades of deep golden brown throughout the cooking process.

To begin, the egg mixture and the necessary ingredients at the start are somewhat demanding, but regardless, it’s still very enjoyable to create. The number of eggs used depends on the number of people eating. Simply double the number of people at the breakfast table and you’ll get the appropriate amount of eggs. Remember that this recipe serves about 2 slices per person, so keep tabs on who exactly is eating.

Now, with the confusing proportions out of the way, it’s time to get busy! Begin by cracking the eggs into a medium mixing bowl, which should be large enough for a single piece of bread to fit in, as well as comfortable enough to whisk in. With all egg yolks safely in the bowl, begin whisking vigorously until the mixture consistency is creamy and smooth.

After that, add vanilla, ground cinnamon, and milk to the mixture. Again, whisk with purpose until the resulting color is a pale yellow with the same smooth consistency. Take a bread slice and place it in the egg mixture. Lightly shake and press the bread slices into the base of the mixing bowl for about 2 seconds on each side to allow the slice to absorb the bulk of the ingredients. Your hands will get messy no matter how hard you try to avoid this from happening, so it’s best to roll with it.

Flip and repeat until you have a moderately damp and spongy piece of bread, then place it flat on top of an already preheated griddle. It’s very unlikely that more than two slices will fit into one pan, so this method will take more time. Regardless, both should be on medium heat. This ensures a consistent cook while preventing any overcooked disasters or excess liquid in the middle of the bread slice. With French toast, there’s not necessarily a given time in which the slices must be removed and that’s that. However, certain grills have faster or slower cooking speeds, something that’s accounted for in the recipe by forcing the chef to check for a full shade of golden brown. If using a griddle, try checking every 30 seconds to a minute for each slice, going in a circular pattern, and using a spatula, of course.

When seeking for the coveted golden brown color, center the spatula directly in front of a slice and with a deliberate pace, quickly slide the spatula under to prop up the slice. To preserve as much of the egg mixture coating on the French toast, avoid constant flipping. Instead, prop up the slices one by one and sneak a peek at the color on the underside to decide how ready the toast is to serve. Once every side on the toast slice has a deep shade of golden brown, with anxiously growing taste buds it’s finally time to serve. Top with any variant of syrup and enjoy warm!

Perfect for a simple weeknight meal, this quick recipe is cheap and easy to prepare in under 20 minutes for virtually anyone. A quick note to make is that this is not a recipe on how to make the pizza dough or sauce. Both are store-bought, but that shouldn’t take away anything from the recipe itself. It’s just as fun while requiring less work. For those hurried dinner nights that have nothing sounding good to eat, a simple run to the store for three simple ingredients can save a lot of time otherwise spent contemplating. Sure, it might take a bit of time to get the ingredients all together in one place, but the recipe isn’t very demanding at all. The aroma floating out of the oven after it’s all done is enough for anyone to be convinced into preparing a pizza!

Start by making sure the oven is heated to 450°F and put a baking stone on the oven rack. It’s an absolute must to remember that anything plastic is a no-go in the oven. Any plastic tray caught in the oven for a prolonged period of time will melt, and there’s no circumventing that rule. Most baking stones are made of heat-resistant clays, ceramics, or cast-iron material that are much safer to put in such intense temperatures.

An investment in a solid baking stone can go a long way, and not just for pizza. The hundreds of oven recipes out there often call for these simple but effective tools. That’s not to say that you absolutely have to put everything on a baking stone, but for pizza, it allows for a crispier crust and more heat distribution than your average pan. The process of preheating and preparation is a nice first step to gain familiarity with using an oven, although I bet that some reading this have plenty of experience with ovens.

Next up is the fun part: topping the pizza! Firstly, we need to spoon some pizza sauce out onto the premade crust. Below the crust should be a cutting board of some kind, as long as it’s larger than the crust itself. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue due to the crust being 12 inches or so. Almost all cutting boards can accommodate this.

Grab a spoon and start scooping a generous amount of pizza sauce without going overboard. There’s no going back or redos in cooking, so if there’s any uncertainty about precisely how much pizza sauce to spread on the crust, do less. While the general consensus is that mozzarella cheese is the go-to cheese to be put on pizza (due to its high elasticity), I encourage anyone to try using other kinds of cheese, albeit in an honest moderation. Too much parmesan dumped all over another type of cheese after the sauce, for example, will almost always bring an overwhelming taste to the creation, subsequently putting the main flavor focus on the fatty cheese. Nothing wrong with this at all, but ideally, a great pizza has a balance of flavors. Too much cheddar can cause a clash of sharp flavors among the cheddar cheese and sauce. Mozzarella doesn’t pose a very rich flavor that can conflict with the sauce’s piquant flavor underneath. This makes it my personal favorite to put on pizza.

Continuing on, now comes the process of transferring the pizza, toppings and all, into the oven. Open up the oven and gently push the circular disc of pizza on the preheated pizza stone. Keep shaking the cutting board slightly until the pizza shifts softly and flat onto the baking stone. Oven mitts aren’t required here, but take caution of not putting a bare hand on any metal part of the oven racks. After all, it's hundreds of degrees hot.

After the pizza is safe on the stone in the oven, lower the current preheated temperature of 450°F to 425°F. Think of the cheese serving as a blanket of sorts over the top of the pizza sauce, which brings plenty of its own signature tangy and sweet flavor as a direct flavor contrast to the shredded cheese. The blanket of smothered, shredded cheese won’t initially look like one when decorating, but given time and heat in the oven, the stiff strips will transform into a melted consistency that swallows up the sauce below. Eventually, the soft and malleable cheese permeates the pizza sauce, resulting in a pale yellow blanket.

With only 10 minutes of cooking time (or more, depending on the type of oven), it does not take long at all to get the first whiff of the piping hot crust from beyond the thick oven doors. That golden-brown tinge of cheese is a surefire visual cue that it’s ready to be taken out. If 10 minutes go by without a perfect shade of that color, then by all means, remove the pizza beforehand. Everything in the food world doesn’t have to have a particular color to indicate doneness, and 10 minutes in most ovens for this recipe is enough.

Remove carefully, again with caution, to not completely ruin dinner by dropping a cooked pizza into the scorched depths of an oven. Be deliberate with sliding the cooked crust back onto a cutting board. After a couple of minutes of cooling down on top of the board, begin cutting slices of six or eight pieces to further the cooling. These are pretty small pieces, but they can fill up the average person rather quickly due to the slices’ fatty elements. Save some for later if needed, but regardless, enjoy cooked or refrigerated!

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Ease of access is considered greatly here on this column, and I think anyone, regardless of culinary status, should be able to make and enjoy a great meal. As seen in the technicalities of the French toast and the rather painless process of basically combining and heating store-bought materials to create pizza, each recipe provides a feeling of accomplishment for chefs everywhere.

You don’t need to be a world-renowned personality to be considered a chef. At the end of the day, I’m happy to be a chef just for the 20-40 minutes of preparing a meal. The successful attempts, the failed attempts, the messy attempts, and even the burned attempts at making something have always made me proud of the effort no matter the result.

When the finished smell comes hovering around the room in all its pleasantries, it makes it all the more special in knowing that a recipe will turn out clean and delicious on a plate. Materials, budgets, or ingredients don’t necessarily define a chef, but rather the practice and pride for the effort of their creations.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the various authors in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Kamiak High School or The Gauntlet.