Oven-Baked Peach French Toast

The most shocking thing about this recipe isn't how easy it is to assemble ahead and bake when you need it, or even how extremely delicious it tastes. No, the most shocking thing about this recipe is that it comes from my mother.

I hear the audible gasp out there and I know you must be thinking, "that's a horrible thing to write!", but let me first tell you about a little thing I like to call my childhood. Don't worry, it was a happy one, with lots of good memories and happy times. However, a lot of those happy times didn't occur in the kitchen for me or my brothers. You see, my mom is amazing. And she was, in my opinion, way ahead of her time. She made her own tofu. She made her own soy milk. She grew herbs and juiced vegetables and then baked bread with the leftover vegetable pulp. She would drag me to the one lonely health-food store in our town where she would point to the completely unappetizing array of faux-chocolate bars and sugar-free fruit chews and say, "you may pick one out as a special treat!".  
But all of that wasn't even so bad (well, upon reflection at least. It was pretty horrid as a child). And what's ironic, really, is how close I am now in the way I view food and nutrition as my mom did back then (and still today). However...what continues to cause my brothers and I to shudder and sometimes wake up in night sweats are the memories of our childhood dinners. I remember one  meal in particular that actually made me burst into tears when she set the plate in front of me. So, even though my mom has finally proven herself in the kitchen (conveniently after we all moved out) and is someone I often turn to for cooking advice, I hope you can understand why the fact that I can now rely on my mom to pass on recipes this good still amazes me.
Oven-Baked Peach French Toast

Adapted from The Pampered Chef

1 loaf French bread

6 eggs

1-1/2 cups milk

3 tbsp granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

Ground cinnamon, to taste

1 can peach slices

1/3 cup brown sugar

Walnuts (optional)

Spray 9"x13" pan with cooking spray. Cut bread into 1-inch thick slices; arrange closely in a single layer in your dish.

In a bowl, beat eggs with a whisk. Then whisk in milk, sugar, vanilla and salt. Pour over bread. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour or overnight (the bread will completely absorb the liquid ingredients).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Remove bread from refrigerator and sprinkle with cinnamon. Layer peach slices on top of bread, sprinkle with the brown sugar and walnuts.

Bake, uncovered, about 30 minutes or until golden brown.