The 'French toast' usage for bread fork-toasted on one side only, often is done this way because the bread is already buttered but has remained uneaten - a way of avoiding waste. My mother certainly called this 'French toast'. However, the bread fried in egg is certainly what Americans mean by 'French toast'; it figures largely in one scene of Thornton Wilder's moving play about American family life & community, "Our Town" (1938).

I'll bet anyone plenty of 6 to 5 that the French lay no claim to either comestible!

~M~