How to Make Old Fashioned Bread Pudding

This simple dish, a staple in thrifty homes of the last century, has been lost to the current generation of cooks, most of whom have only tasted the dish in restaurants. The truth is that bread pudding can be easily made at home. Make it with leftover bread and you'll save about $4 out of the $4.50 you'd spend at a restaurant. And the smell of it lingers through the evening. Oh--and there are no promises about low-calorie or low-carb servings. You'll have to modify your own portion for that. This is the way we make it at our house. You can omit the apples but the white raisins are required!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 8-10 cups of day-old bread with crust, cut in 2" cubes
• 3-4 eggs
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 cups milk
• 2 tsp. tsp. sugar-cinnamon
• 1 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 5 medium or 4 large cooking apples, sliced thin
• margarine or butter
• 1/2 cup white raisins

1. 

   Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and liberally grease a large casserole with margarine or butter. Melt about 1/4 cup of butter in a large saucepan and saute the apples until semi-translucent. Sprinkle with a teaspoon of the sugar-cinnamon and continue to cook until golden. Set aside to cool a bit.

2. 

   Combine eggs, milk, brown sugar, nutmeg and vanilla in a bowl and set aside. If you have more bread, use 4 eggs.

3. 

   Put a layer of bread in the bottom of your pan. Spoon half of the apple mixture on top and sprinkle half the raisins over it. You can use regular raisins if that's your favorite but white raisins make a more elegant dish. Repeat with a second layer of bread, apples and raisins and pour the milk-egg mixture over it. You should be able to see a little of the liquid peeking up through the bread but the pan shouldn't be full of it.

4. 

   Pull a fork through the bread to mix the layers a bit and sprinkle the pan with cinnamon sugar. If your bread is very hard, you may need to add a little milk and let it stand for about ten minutes before putting it in the oven.

5. 

   Put casserole in a slow cooker or roasting pan filled about halfway up the side of the dish. Bake for about 45 minutes or until firm. If you've put your dish in a regular oven, the bread may brown a bit. Serve warm with rum or caramel sauce. At our house we use a whiskey sauce made with butter, confectioner's sugar and a splash from a bottle of good old Kentucky bourbon. My mother frequently put a handful of chopped pecans in the whiskey sauce.

Tips & Warnings

• Like most family recipes, this one is of the "a pinch of this, a handful of that" variety. If you don't have a "cinnamon bear" on your table for toast in the morning, mix a teaspoon of cinnamon with a quarter cup of table sugar.
• Do not use sugar substitutes for sauteing your apples--it doesn't caramelize the way cane sugar does.
• Use a nice, firm apple for cooking. Delicious apples and other soft types may be fine for eating but fall apart when cooked.
• Those big slow cooker/roasters are perfect for making bread pudding--or any steamed pudding. We inherited one that's been roasting turkeys for over seventy years but they're widely available now that they're popular for home use again. They also use less electricity than an (electric) oven.
• Use caution with the heated water in the steaming pan. Remove your pudding first and let the water cool before dumping it.
• Don't tell your dinner guests how easy this stuff is. They'll all want the recipe.

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