Breakfast (or Dessert) Bread Pudding

Vegetarian

This is a gorgeous dish for entertaining, and can be kept at room temperature for hours. As the name implies, this is not food for the carb or calorie conscious, but we all have to live a little sometimes, right? Creamy, sweet, and utterly decadent, Breakfast Bread Pudding is sure to impress a crowd, and possibly your mother-in-law.

1 loaf of Challah bread (If you can’t find Challah, try some Brioche, or even a white baguette)
4 tablespoons of melted butter
6 eggs
½ cup tightly-packed brown sugar (yes, you can use white sugar too)
2 cups of milk (I like to use whole milk, but use whatever you have)
½ cup orange or grapefruit juice
lots of earthy spices (I love cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ground ginger)
salt
a few handfuls of dried fruit (I love cherries or prunes) (optional)
a few handfuls of nuts (I like pistachios or almonds) (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375°.

Tear up your bread into large, bight-sized pieces. Put the pieces of bread into a large, greased, baking dish.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

While the butter is melting, crack the eggs into a bowl. Add the sugar, the milk, the juice, a ton of spices (go heavy on the cinnamon), a few good pinches of salt, the dried fruit, and the nuts. Whisk everything together.

Add the melted butter to the egg mixture and whisk.

Pour the mixture over your bread. You don’t want the bread to drown in the mixture, but you do want enough to make everything really wet. Try pressing down on the bread to make sure it gets properly moist. Don’t worry if you don’t use all of the egg mixture. If you happen to run out of the mixture and feel you need more, don’t worry. Just crack a few more eggs, add a little more milk, and some spices, and pour that over the bread.

Cover the baking dish with some tin foil and pop it all into the oven for 20-30 minutes. Check on it after 20 minutes by touching the center. If it is really soupy, keep baking for another 20 minutes. Ultimately, you shouldn’t see any liquid pooling in the dish. For a crispy crust on top, remove the foil and continue to bake.

What else can you do to fancy-up your bread pudding? How about pieces of crystallized ginger, or lots of citrus zest? Want to be really naughty? Try placing a few pieces of chocolate in between the chunks of bread before you bake it. A few splashes of Kalua or Baileys would be a nice too, instead of the fruit juice. You can also try using fresh fruit, like berries, in the batter. If you would like to eat it for dessert, it’s not a bad idea… especially if you top it with fresh whipped cream.