Bread Pudding

This is obviously not a Passover recipe — but there’s a connection! I was cleaning out my freezer for Passover and discovered a huge cache of my husband’s homemade challah (a subject for a future post!). We keep lots of not-kosher-for-Passover foods over the holiday, putting it away in a cupboard we don’t use for that week and actually selling it (via our rabbi) to someone not Jewish. But we never keep bread — the quintessential forbbiden food — over Passover. But I couldn’t bear to throw away one large and two small loaves of perfectly good bread! My solution — bread pudding, which I love any time of the year. With so much bread, I made a large one, so we’ll be enjoying some yummy breakfasts (and maybe some desserts) between now and Monday.

The only downside was that I didn’t have time to let the bread get really dried out. Usually I let the bread cubes sit in a bowl on my counter for a good few days before I make bread pudding.

This is almost more of a method than a recipe, because you can change it in so many ways. You can reduce the size of the pudding easily by reducing the ingredients proportionately. You can change the flavor by using different dried fruits (e.g. cherries, apricots) or by adding chopped fresh fruit (e.g. tart apples, pineapple, peaches, blueberries). You can even add chocolate chips or chopped nuts. You can substitute maple syrup for the brown sugar. You can substitute almond extract for the vanilla.

Ingredients:

8 cups cubed stale bread, crusts removed (challah works great)
6 eggs
3 cups milk
¼ cup brown sugar (use ½ cup or even a little  more if you plan to serve it as a dessert rather than a breakfast or brunch dish)
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
Pinch of salt
½ cup raisins
2 Tbs. butter

Directions:

Beat the eggs, and then beat in the milk, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Pour the custard over the bread cubes and mix well so the bread is completely soaked. Mix in the raisins. Turn into a greased baking dish, and dot with butter. Cover the dish and refrigerate overnight or for at least a few hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and remove baking dish from refrigerator to come to room temperature.

Bake, uncovered, about an hour until the pudding is puffed and golden and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool at least 15 minutes before serving (the pudding will sink a bit). Serve hot or at room temperature.

Serves 6 to 8