Experimenting with Bread Pudding

When we went to the festival this year, we took enough food for four days. After they canceled the festival, the Unimaginable Mini-Fest we attended instead was only two days. We returned home with a lot of extra food, including two loaves of white bread intended for grilled pimento cheese sandwiches. We put the bread in the freezer to use later. We decided we needed to do something sooner rather than later with the limited freezer space, so I decided to make bread pudding.

I found a recipe that didn’t seem too complicated. The recipe called for a loaf of Italian bread. Mistake number one was that I didn’t realize that white and Italian bread is not a one-for-one swap. After I toasted the bread in the oven, I put it into the milk as the recipe dictated. I realized there was a problem when the bread did not absorb all the milk. I decided to continue my project anyway, and the rest of the recipe was easy to follow.

The next issue I had was what vessel to use for cooking the bread pudding. We rented a furnished place for the winter, and most of our kitchen equipment is still in storage in Colorado. The recipe said to use a 9 x 13-inch pan. After I checked in all the cabinets, I realized that I did not have one. I didn’t want to buy a new pan, so I checked to ensure my big frying pan fit into our tiny oven. I figured it would probably work, but I realized the pan was too small after putting the bread pudding together.  The batter did fit into my cast iron Dutch oven, so I went with that.

After the 45-minutes that the recipe called for, I checked the temperature. I expected it to need a longer cook time as the batter was deeper than it would have been in the bigger pan, so I wasn’t surprised when it needed more time. After an additional 20 minutes, the thermometer read 160-degrees.

I made the bourbon sauce as the recipe described. The instructions said to cook the sauce until it coated the back of a spoon. The problem was that the butter, sugar, and egg mixture coated the spoon as soon as I stirred it together. I noticed that the sauce was still grainy because the sugar had not dissolved, so I continued to cook it. Even after 20 minutes, the sugar was still not completely dissolved. Finally, I took it off the heat and added the bourbon, according to the recipe.

When Chris came home from work, we attempted to plate a piece of the bread pudding to find it was severely undercooked. So, we put it back into the oven to bake more. I was upset that the bread pudding had not been successful, so Chris reminded me that they do not write recipes for non-chefs like me. When I told him my theories on what went wrong, he agreed with me. He then pointed out to me how much progress I have made in the kitchen. In the past, I would not have been able to figure out what had gone wrong.

After cooking the bread pudding for another two hours, it was finally cooked through but remained very dense. The bourbon-soaked craisins were fantastic, and the bread pudding was edible, but it wasn’t the yummy goodness I wanted.

Adding the bourbon after cooking the sauce (as the recipe indicated) gave it a harsh flavor. I later reheated the sauce, giving it time to cook off the alcohol. It ended up with a much better taste, but the sauce took on an unappealing gray color.

I decided to give it another shot with the other loaf of bread. The pastry chef at work had made wine-poached pears for dessert. She gave me the poaching liquid, so I thought I would attempt to get creative with the next batch. I loosely followed the recipe I had used on the first one but tweaked it, hoping to create a delicious dessert.

I cut the bread into one-inch pieces and baked it in the oven at 225-degrees (the lowest temperature that my oven goes to) for ten minutes. While the bread was toasting, I cut four pears into pieces and simmered them in the wine poaching liquid for 15 minutes. They were delicious.  Instead of using the four cups of milk in the recipe, I started with one cup and added the bread. Then, I added more milk gradually, for a total of 2 ½ cups, until the bread had absorbed all the milk and had no more dry spots.

The recipe calls for three large eggs. I had extra-large, so I only used two. I whisked the eggs and then added sugar. I felt the first bread pudding was overly sweet, so I went with only one cup of sugar instead of the two in the recipe. I added two tablespoons of vanilla, ¼ teaspoon allspice, and ½ teaspoon cinnamon to the eggs and whisked the mixture together. Next, I added the egg mixture and half of the poached pears to the bread and gently stirred them together.

To avoid the extra-long cook this time, I picked up a 9 x 13-inch aluminum pan. I melted three tablespoons of butter, coated the bottom and sides of the pan with it, poured the bread mixture into the pan, and baked it at 350-degrees. After 20 minutes, I turned the pan and then baked it for another 20 minutes. I continued to bake the bread pudding in five-minute increments until it was set and at 160-degrees, turning the pan each time for a total cook time of an hour and fifteen minutes.

While the bread pudding finished cooking, I simmered the liquid from poaching the pears over medium-high heat for about 15 minutes until it was reduced to half and started to thicken.

When I cut the bread pudding, it was very flat and still wet. I don’t think you should use white sandwich bread for bread pudding, but I created a great flavor, so it wasn’t a total loss. There was a lot of improvement over the first attempt. I will have to keep working on perfecting my bread pudding skills.