Despite the name, French toast doesn’t hail from France. It’s a much more ancient dish than that and has been traced all the way back to 4th century Rome. The dish has traveled far and been through many iterations since that point and versions now be found in many countries, including Germany, France (where it’s known as pain perdu), India, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The American version of the dish is a popular breakfast food that’s often sweet and served with maple syrup. It’s simple enough to make at home for breakfast and exciting enough for special occasions or as a restaurant meal.
There are plenty of ways to tweak French toast. This includes changing the flavoring ingredients or even experimenting with the recipe to create stuffed French toast.
However, one of the most powerful ideas is to play around with the sides. Learning what to serve with French toast allows you to tailor the dish to match the occasion and your flavor preferences.
Possible French toast sides include bacon, fresh fruit, eggs, cinnamon apples, and more. You might serve just one of these or perhaps a combination.
P.S. To make French toast even more decadent, try preparing a sous vide version.
What To Serve With French Toast (13 Sides To Try)
Bacon
Bacon is one of those magical ingredients that makes every meal taste so much better. It’s certainly perfect for French toast, offering a salty and smoky flavor. This flavor is an excellent contrast to the soft sweetness of your French toast and works well with savory French toast recipes too.
There’s a practical reason for including bacon as well – the protein content. French toast doesn’t have a lot of protein on its own, so it isn’t incredibly filling. Simply serving bacon with French toast makes the meal more satisfying and should keep you full for longer.
This idea works best if you focus on high quality bacon, like some from a bacon of the month club. Such bacon has a much better flavor and texture.
If you’re worried about the saturated fat in bacon, you could experiment with lower fat options like turkey bacon or lean ham. While these don’t taste as good, they are better for you.
Smoked Shotgun Shells
These Smoked Shotgun Shells are much more engaging and flavorful than bacon on its own.
We’re talking about pasta shells that have been stuffed with a mixture of ground beef, hot sausage, onion, cheese, cream cheese, jalapeno, and seasoning mix. This combo of ingredients creates an incredible balance of flavors, especially once the shells are wrapped in bacon and covered with barbecue sauce.
The original version of the recipe is pretty spicy, as it uses spicy Italian sausage, jalapenos, and red pepper flakes. However, you can easily use a milder sausage and simply omit the jalapenos and pepper flakes. There are plenty of other flavors, so the side will still taste amazing regardless.
Sausages
Sausages are another excellent side for French toast. Like bacon, they can work well with both sweet and savory versions of French toast, giving you plenty of flexibility.
Then there’s all the variation in sausages. There are so many different types to choose from, including differences in the meat used, the flavoring ingredients, the texture, and more. Then there are more significant differences, like fresh sausages compared to smoked sausages and dry cured sausages.
Most types of sausages are going to go well with your French toast. It’s simply a matter of finding the type you enjoy the most.
Don’t be afraid to experiment here. You could even try plant-based sausages instead of regular ones.
Honey And Mustard Cocktail Sausages
Instead of serving plain sausages, you could try something like these Honey and Mustard Cocktail Sausages. They’re incredibly simple, as the recipe just relies on mustard, honey, sausages, and a little salt.
Yet, these few ingredients are enough to ramp up the flavor of your sausages. This works particularly well when your sausages are relatively mild, without a ton of flavor of their own.
Hash Browns
Hash browns are another breakfast-themed side that goes well with French toast. They offer a fantastic crispy texture and often some salt, which is an excellent contrast to your French toast.
The one issue is the carbs, as toast and hash browns are both fairly high in carbs. To balance the meal more, you might add a few other sides, like the bacon and/or sausages we mentioned earlier. Doing so gives you a filling meal with plenty of flavors and textures.
Cauliflower Hash Browns
As the name suggests, these Cauliflower Hash Browns mimic regular hash browns, except that they rely on cauliflower, cheese, and seasonings instead of potatoes.
Using cauliflower decreases the carb content and makes the side much healthier. Plus, you still get the same crispy texture that comes with regular hash browns.
Egg Muffins
Egg muffins have countless uses. They’re excellent additions to lunchboxes and work well as high protein snacks on their own.
Today, we’re interested in how well they work alongside French toast. They’re soft and delicious. Plus, the flavor is mild enough that it complements both sweet and savory versions of French toast.
There are plenty of ways to vary and experiment with your egg muffins. You might use fresh herbs to add flavor, mix in extra veggies or mushrooms, or use ingredients like bacon and cheese for extra richness.
Sausage Egg Muffins
These Sausage Egg Muffins offer plenty of flavor and protein, making them an excellent way to round out your breakfast. The muffins don’t just rely on eggs and sausage, though, there are also extra ingredients, including red peppers, spinach, cheese, and seasoning ingredients like garlic powder.
The muffins are also very practical, as you can prepare them ahead of time and then reheat them when your French toast is ready. And, like most recipes, you can easily tweak some of the ingredients to create a version of your own.
Another Egg Dish
Eggs are a classic side for French toast, which makes sense as they’re savory and offer plenty of protein. The combination works even better if you’re serving bacon or sausage as another side.
This is also one of the most versatile options, as there are so many different ways to serve eggs. Scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and poached eggs are just a few classic options and all work well with French toast. You can also experiment with using herbs and spices to tweak the flavor profile.
Mediterranean Scrambled Eggs
Think scrambled eggs are boring? If so, these Mediterranean Scrambled Eggs should do the trick. The eggs are complemented by fresh tomatoes, baby spinach, feta cheese, and a few other ingredients.
That combination of eggs, tomatoes, spinach, and feta cheese really is stunning. You could even serve this as a meal in its own right, although it’s much better alongside French toast or some other dish.
This meal can also act as inspiration. What other ingredients could you mix into your scrambled eggs to make them exciting? Why not play around and create your own version?
Caramelized Bananas
Thus far, we’ve been focusing on savory ingredients that contrast the sweetness of your French toast. But, you can go the other way and choose a sweet side instead, like caramelized bananas.
These bananas really are stunning, as the caramelization process plays well with the natural sweetness of the bananas. You also end up with a delicious toffee-like flavor that contrasts perfectly with your French toast.
Caramelized bananas are most often served alongside sweet French toast. However, you can serve it with savory French toast as well. Here, the sweetness will contrast the savory notes in your French toast.
Pan Fried Cinnamon Bananas
These Pan Fried Cinnamon Bananas are an especially delicious treat to try. The recipe is perfectly balanced, giving you bananas with a perfectly soft interior, with a crisp caramelized exterior.
The use of cinnamon makes the bananas even more stunning. This is what sets them apart, especially if you’re also using cinnamon in your French toast recipe.
Fresh Fruit
For a simpler option, why not serve some fresh fruit alongside your French toast? The fruit provides a vibrant fresh flavor that contrasts the richness of your French toast.
This can be as simple as slicing some strawberries or another type of fruit. Or, you might try something more complex, like a fresh fruit salad.
Try leaning into the fruit of the season when doing so. After all, fresh seasonal fruit is always much better than anything imported. This means you might try serving peaches, watermelon, or fresh raspberries in the summer, and then apples, pears, or grapes in the fall.
Blueberry Peach Feta Salad
This Blueberry Peach Feta Salad is much more interesting than serving fruit on its own. It features an unusual combination of ingredients, including peaches, blueberries, cucumber, basil, and feta. These are all delicious and refreshing, even though it’s rare to see them included in the same dish.
Then there’s the simple dressing, which relies on honey, lemon juice, olive oil, and dijon mustard. This adds a fantastic flavor and brings the entire salad together.
It’s easy to see how well this salad would work next to French toast. It would be a great side for many other meals as well.
Cinnamon Apples
Instead of fresh fruit, what about serving cinnamon apples with your French toast? They work beautifully with French toast, offering warmth, sweetness, and often a few tart notes.
The apples can be prepared in a few different ways, like being cooked in a pan with butter and cinnamon, being baked, or being simmered to create apple compote. You can even prepare the apples ahead of time, freeze them, then reheat them for your French toast.
Cinnamon Fried Apples
These Cinnamon Fried Apples are a great option, as they’re simple to prepare and just need a few apples. To make them, you’ll need a fairly tart apple, one that won’t get too mushy after you’ve cooked it (there are some recommendations in the recipe).
Aside from the apples, you’ll just need lemon, butter, brown sugar, white sugar, and cinnamon. You’ll probably have most of these ingredients on hand already.
There’s some flexibility in the cooking time. This allows you to make the apples as soft or as firm as you would like. Firmer ones offer a greater contrast to the softness of your French toast. However, soft apples can be appealing too.
Greek Yogurt
Greek yogurt is excellent if you want something simple, creamy, and healthy. It makes your meal more filling too, as you’re getting a surprising amount of protein with the yogurt.
The idea can be as simple as adding a spoonful of Greek yogurt on top of your French toast and serving it like that. Or, you could get a little more creative like mixing ingredients in with your yogurt, such as chunks of fresh fruit or a little honey.
If you don’t want the yogurt on top of your French toast, try using it as a side dish instead. Here, you could easily dip your French toast into the yogurt, giving you a fantastic contrast of textures.
Lemon Whipped Greek Yogurt
This Lemon Whipped Greek Yogurt is a fantastic alternative to plain Greek yogurt. It simply relies on lemon juice, Greek yogurt, honey, and heavy whipping cream. Mixing cream in with Greek yogurt like this helps to make it lighter, while the lemon juice adds a fantastic vibrant flavor.
The original recipe here actually called for lemon CBD oil, which provided an extra boost of lemon flavor and potential health benefits. The brand isn’t available anymore, so you can simply make the recipe without it instead. Or, you could experiment with regular lemon oil for a similar added flavor.
Roasted Vegetables
French toast sides are often high in fat and not very healthy, but they don’t need to be. You can experiment with healthier sides for French toast as well, like roast vegetables.
These veggies work well partly because roasting them brings out their sweetness, giving you a complementary sweetness between the vegetables and your French toast.
There’s an interesting texture difference as well, as French toast is very soft, while roasted vegetables are crisp around the edges.
You can even use this side for both sweet and savory versions of French toast. For sweet French toast you’re looking for vegetables with natural sweetness. These can be seasoned with warm spices like cinnamon to bring the whole meal together.
For savory French toast, try focusing on earthy vegetables instead. This includes Brussels sprouts and asparagus. Here, rosemary, sage, and similar herbs would be the perfect seasoning ingredients.
Honey Roasted Beets And Carrots
These Honey Roasted Beets and Carrots are a great alternative to regular roast vegetables, as the honey adds an extra layer of flavor and makes them even sweeter than normal. That feature is perfect for serving alongside sweet French toast.
This side also looks stunning, as you have the deep red color from the beets plus the bright orange of the carrots. As the author mentions, you can easily experiment with the colors of your carrots and beets. You could even make a version using yellow beets and purple carrots.
Finally, some fresh sprigs of herbs are excellent on top of the vegetables. These add a nice contrasting flavor and a few savory notes.
Sautéed Spinach
Sautéed spinach is another vegetable-based side to try with French toast. It’s especially good when served with some of the other sides we’ve highlighted, like bacon, hash browns, and eggs.
Spinach is most obvious as a side for savory French toast, but you could serve it alongside sweet French toast as well (especially if your other sides are savory). You could even add some other ingredients with the spinach, like onions, mushrooms, or perhaps some feta cheese.
Bacon Sautéed Spinach
Why serve spinach on its own when you can make this Bacon Sautéed Spinach instead? It’s one of the simplest recipes you’ll find, as it just uses bacon, onion, and spinach (plus seasonings).
You really don’t need more than this, as the bacon will add plenty of flavor. That said, you could use a little garlic too, which would make the dish taste even better.
Sautéed Mushrooms
Sautéed mushrooms are another interesting side, one that’s easily overlooked. Their power is in the savory umami notes that they offer, which contrast the richness of the French toast.
The flavor and texture varies depending on exactly how you cook the mushrooms and the type you use. You can also add extra ingredients, like garlic and parmesan for flavor, or perhaps a splash of cream to create a creamy sauce.
This side works best for savory French toast recipes. You could possibly serve them with sweet French toast too, but the flavor balance wouldn’t work so well here.
Sautéed Garlic Mushrooms
These Sautéed Garlic Mushrooms are simple, yet incredibly delicious. You only need five ingredients – mushrooms, butter, olive oil, garlic, and chicken broth.
The chicken broth is an interesting addition. This brings plenty of flavor to the mushrooms, making them even tastier than normal. The recipe is also great for beginners, as it contains step-by-step instructions and plenty of images to guide you.
Avocado
Avocado toast is famous as a millennial food, although really it’s a delicious dish for every generation. It’s also a fairly inexpensive dish to make at home, especially if you buy avocados during their peak season.
Why not change the dish up a little and serve avocados with your French toast instead? Doing so gives you a delicious creamy side (or topping), plus plenty of heart healthy fats.
The flavor of avocado means that you can easily pair it with either sweet or savory French toast.
Avocado Egg Salad
Instead of just serving avocados with French toast, why not try an avocado egg salad instead? The addition of egg makes this a more filling side, while also giving you a more varied texture than avocado on its own.
This Avocado Egg Salad is a great version to try. It uses just a handful of ingredients, including the avocado and eggs, plus mayonnaise, lime juice, chives, salt, and pepper.
These ingredients create a low carb side, which is perfect, given that you’re getting so many carbs from the bread anyway.
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