Bread Pudding; a Story of Ambition, Regret, and Redemption

So, you bought a fancy loaf of bread, stars in your eyes in the bakery section of the grocery store, with big aspirations of making a nice garlic bread for your mid-week pasta meal. “Treat yourself,” you think, “You deserve it." Wednesday rolls around, you make your pasta in a post-work blear and while the idea of garlic bread is tempting, the effort is just too much. “I’ll use that bread later,” you think.

But you don’t.

Now it’s Sunday and you have a rock hard loaf of bread staring at you that you don’t want to throw away because food waste is a sin. But fear not, my friend, for bread pudding will be your salvation.

The ingredients

  • 2 cups milk

  • 2 tbsp butter plus extra for greasing

  • 1 tsp vanilla

  • 1/3 cup sugar

  • pinch of salt

  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon

  • 1 loaf of stale bread, cubed

  • 2 eggs beaten

The recipe

  1. In a small saucepan over low heat, warm milk, butter, vanilla, sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Continue cooking until the butter melts, then set aside to cool.

  2. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

  3. Meanwhile, butter your baking dish and fill with cubed bread.

  4. Add eggs to cooled butter/milk mixture and whisk; pour mixture over bread. (IMPORTANT: liquid must be cool before you add the eggs or you will cook them and end up with scrambled eggs in your pudding!)

  5. Bake your bread pudding for 30-45 minutes or until the custard has set but has a little wobble. The edges of the bread will be browned when it is ready.

  6. Let cool for 15-20 minutes so the custard sets before serving.

Closing notes

I usually make this as a Sunday breakfast item, companion to bacon or sausage and a nice cup of coffee. Maple syrup tastes great over bread pudding, but you can go the traditional dessert route and sprinkle it with some powdered sugar.

This recipe is even better if you’ve baked a big loaf of challah bread that you couldn’t finish! I will admit to reserving a half loaf of fresh challah and letting it get stale just to make bread pudding with but any bread that you’ve forgotten about until it could break rocks will do.

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Happy Cooking!

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Jessica Elam