I am on a mission to make the best bread pudding. I will be making one bread pudding a week for the next year and making videos of the cooking process and the results.
@phatmass Ewww. Guy is so repulsive. All those chains, rings and wristbands are like little germ collectors. He's always sweaty and he constantly licks his fingers and puts them back in the food -- worse yet, he chews with his mouth open. I absolutely can't stand to watch anything he's in. All of this is amplified by his bowling shirts and wearing his sunglasses on the back of his head.
Don't have a recipe, but this restaurant I go to used to make a bread pudding with one of the beers they had on tap (rotated with the taps, was not always the same beer). Was damn delicious, and I would suggest trying to incorporate beer into one or many of your bread puddings.
@mehlissa What if you made a banana bread beer bread, then used that and more banana bread beer to make a banana bread beer banana bread beer bread bread pudding?
@brhfl I can cook well but am a terrible baker. I burn things and most of the time cakes fall in in the middle or come out uneven and lumpy. That said... If you happen to bake your idea into reality then please feel free to add your address to your next post so that I may show up on your doorstep to politely beg for a corner piece of your yummy idea. (Does the FL in your username stand for Florida? If yes, then we may be neighbors.)
I always start out with the intention of making a great bread pudding. I lay out all of my ingredients, pre heat the oven, then down the bottle of bourbon, pass out and wake up when the firemen are evacuating the house.
@phatmass I for one am really interested in this post. I love bread pudding! And iif ou can figure out that buttery/burbon sauce PLEASE share!! My Mom could make it but there is no record of it and she is gone.
@silverqueen The bourbon sauce is actually something I've already mastered... 1 cup real butter. 1 cup half-and-half. 1 cup white sugar. 1 tsp vanilla. Mix all that in a saucepan until well melted and creamy. Then, let simmer until it starts to bubble up. Turn off heat. Mix in 1 shot of bourbon.
@phatmass Sorry it took me so long to reply. This sounds wonderful. I can't wait to try it! I now have to get to the store for all the ingrediants.Yummmmm! And I saved the email, flagged and marked as IMPORTANT. Smile
Tear one loaf of french bread into 1-2" chunks. Drizzle with melted butter. Toast in oven on both sides till crunchy. Fill a 13" baking pan with bread chunks. If this doesn't fill up the pan, make more bread or use a smaller pan. Strain and reserve the juice from canned peaches and cut them into bite sized pieces. You want mushy peaches for this. If you are lucky enough to have access to ripe fresh peaches, use them instead. Mix the peaches into the bread. Mix the juice, a splash of real vanilla and enough half and half (milk and cream) to cover the bread. Top with pecans and dust with cinnamon if desired (I hate cinnamon). Bake at 350 till done, maybe an hour. Liquid should be well absorbed into the bread, making it spongey, not soggy. Top should be crunchy. Meanwhile, make a simple syrup using a small amount of hot water and melting a large amount of table sugar into it. Make sure the sugar is fully melted. Once it has cooled, mix equal parts simple syrup and (real) butter and a half portion of nice liquor or liquour (brandy and rum are popular but amaretto or grand marnier are also nice) together with a fork till smooth. Keep sauce at room temperature. Serve the bread pudding hot, with a generous amount of sauce spooned over it. Sorry for the lack of detail, I cook by instinct, not recipe.
I would be truly grateful if someone has a bread pudding that's gluten-free and actually accounts for the qualities (note: not "quality," because that would be wrong, because it does not have a quality of quality) of gluten-free bread and isn't just a regular bread pudding with gluten-free bread substituted.
Or, yaknow, at least you've tried it with gluten-free bread and it's delicious.
I love bread pudding. I really don't miss bread per se, just it's pudding.
@joelmw No, but if you come up with a good one, I would buy into a Kickstarter project to produce it. :-D There have been a couple of promising gluten-free Kickstarters I tried to back, but both cancelled. Guess I'll have to stick with Canyon Bakehouse and 3Bakers breads. Great bread, but not for pudding. (And before anyone - @tightwad - asks: yes, like @joelmw, I have celiac disease.)
@tightwad I am, blood test and biopsied. My villi weren't fully atrophied when they caught it, but I was pretty messed up and there was definitely damage. I take it extremely seriously. I can appreciate the fatigue with the fadsters. Yaknow, the thing I don't get is the folks with celiac disease who think it's okay to cheat. If you know anything about the disease and its potential impact on every system in the body, that's just insane. I'm sympathetic to folks avoiding gluten for other reasons (there is a case to be made for both intolerance and the general unhealthiness of too much gluten; thankfully, it's not my job to make that case), but I wish the folks who don't have to be 100% gluten-free would be a little more precise with their language, a little more informed (and rational and consistent) about what and why they're doing whatever they're doing and a little less crazy. Sigh.
Hey there, @rockblossom, where you located? There are some awesome resources here in the DFW area, including a couple of growing GF and even Paleo bakeries. We've got some good GF restaurants too. If you're ever in the neighborhood, I'd be happy to share some of our findings. We have a good GIG group too.
@joelmw The fadsters make it hard for sure, I can't imagine having to deal with that. The problem is that it's not like a peanut allergy that can kill you on the spot, so cheating doesn't have an immediate effect. Good luck sticking to it, sorry for all the goodness you can't have!
@tightwad I often point out that I won't keel over in the restaurant but that they'll be killing me slowly. Though I worry that some might find that an amusing sort of challenge.
@joelmw Thanks for offer. At the moment I am perched here on top of an Ozark. There are GF restaurants and stores with a lot of GF products in my area. Of course "in my area" is a relative term, since the closest restaurant of any kind is about 18 miles away. There's a Celiac Support Group here, too, but they meet about 45 miles from my house.
More than a decade ago there were GF breads, but they were slightly less nutritious (and palatable) than a brick-and-cardboard sandwich. But then I could order a salad (no croutons) and a burger sans bun with no problem. If I do that now, I get the look that says "Oh, one of THOSE people." Or there's something on the menu like barley soup or spelt bread labeled "gluten free" and a wait person who insists that if it isn't wheat, it isn't gluten. (I now trust "gluten free" menus like I trust politicians who say they just want the job to help their constituents. ) Or GF sugar-laden cookies - and I'm very sensitive to refined sugars. So I usually take food with me when I'm away from home. Fortunately, being retired, I can fix food at home and just avoid all the irritating "I don't know what gluten is, but I'm again' it" people.
Soon a new fad diet will come along and all of the Hollywood Elite will switch and take their slavish followers with them, leaving the GF food to us. Sadly, there may be less available because of reduced demand.
The best bread pudding that I ever had was made with cream cheese in it. Unfortunately, the person that made it absolutely refused to share the recipe. I'm looking forward to seeing your favorite recipe at the end of all of this.
Zio's Italian Kitchen (it is a Midwestern chain / thing, and not all that great) had the best damn bread pudding I have ever had . . . but that all changed . . .
For five years that bread pudding was on the menu - it was a staple, always there to comfort you after a meal. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that bread pudding, I was gonna make it a big star. And let me be even more frank, just to show you that I'm not a hard-hearted man, and that it's not all dollars and cents: That bread pudding was beautiful; it was young; it was innocent. It was the greatest piece of pudding I've ever had, and I've had 'em all over the world. And then Johnny Fontane comes along with his olive oil voice and guinea charm, takes over the kitchen and runs it off the menu. He threw it all away just to make me look ridiculous! And a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous!
If you find the (old, ORIGINAL) recipe, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, please post it. The newer version just isn't the same, and they don't always have it available anyway . . .
I worked in a Po' Folks restaurant for years. It's a shit kickin', aw shucks, family kind of place. Their bread pudding was hugely popular. I don't know how it's made but the base was great big cathead biscuits. I think the dense biscuit was the key to the recipe. It's something I've never tried at home and would like to. I'll be reading this thread and piecing together a recipe from the ones posted here. It's not to hard to personalize a recipe. Pick the parts that sound like a good match and try it.
Bread pudding is super-gross. Should I also post my favorite way to have shit smeared on my face?
@capguncowboy well that escalated quickly
@capguncowboy just when the forums were calming down the next big battle is about to begin.
@capguncowboy You are so so wrong. Bread pudding is in my top 3 desserts, it's amazing.
@Ignorant I wasn't trying to start anything -- just comparing bread pudding to something I would find equally enjoyable.
@capguncowboy also…uh…do you really have a favorite way to have shit smeared on your face? If so, that's weird.
@JonT Wouldn't you like to know?
@JonT If you ever make it over to Ft Worth, this place has one of my favorite bread puddings in DFW:
@phatmass Ewww. Guy is so repulsive. All those chains, rings and wristbands are like little germ collectors. He's always sweaty and he constantly licks his fingers and puts them back in the food -- worse yet, he chews with his mouth open. I absolutely can't stand to watch anything he's in. All of this is amplified by his bowling shirts and wearing his sunglasses on the back of his head.
@capguncowboy I am actually fine with everything except the sunglasses on the back of the head...
@capguncowboy Agreed. He is nasty.
What's bread pudding??
@derek17j It's a delicious dessert made from leftover/day-old bread. A lot of times served with a delicious bourbon or liquor based butter sauce.
@derek17j It's like soggy, mushy, cinnamon french toast.
@hallmike My bread pudding is neither soggy nor mushy sir.
@phatmass Then I might like yours. Soggy bread makes me cringe.
@derek17j It's a lovely custard-based dessert made with bread and any variety of add-ins.
@derek17j It can also be made as a savory side dish. I make one with sautéed onions and cheddar cheese that I serve with grilled rib-eye steak
I love bread pudding! Pay no attention to the naysayers.
They hate life.
Don't have a recipe, but this restaurant I go to used to make a bread pudding with one of the beers they had on tap (rotated with the taps, was not always the same beer). Was damn delicious, and I would suggest trying to incorporate beer into one or many of your bread puddings.
@brhfl Love this idea. Also going to make one that incorporates coffee somehow.
@phatmass Kill two birds with one stone?
@brhfl I bet Guinness or Well's Banana Bread beer or their Sticky Toffee Pudding Ale would be good ones to try.
@mehlissa What if you made a banana bread beer bread, then used that and more banana bread beer to make a banana bread beer banana bread beer bread bread pudding?
@brhfl I can cook well but am a terrible baker. I burn things and most of the time cakes fall in in the middle or come out uneven and lumpy. That said... If you happen to bake your idea into reality then please feel free to add your address to your next post so that I may show up on your doorstep to politely beg for a corner piece of your yummy idea. (Does the FL in your username stand for Florida? If yes, then we may be neighbors.)
I always start out with the intention of making a great bread pudding. I lay out all of my ingredients, pre heat the oven, then down the bottle of bourbon, pass out and wake up when the firemen are evacuating the house.
@phatmass I for one am really interested in this post. I love bread pudding! And iif ou can figure out that buttery/burbon sauce PLEASE share!! My Mom could make it but there is no record of it and she is gone.
@silverqueen The bourbon sauce is actually something I've already mastered... 1 cup real butter. 1 cup half-and-half. 1 cup white sugar. 1 tsp vanilla. Mix all that in a saucepan until well melted and creamy. Then, let simmer until it starts to bubble up. Turn off heat. Mix in 1 shot of bourbon.
@phatmass Sorry it took me so long to reply. This sounds wonderful. I can't wait to try it! I now have to get to the store for all the ingrediants.Yummmmm! And I saved the email, flagged and marked as IMPORTANT. Smile
Tear one loaf of french bread into 1-2" chunks. Drizzle with melted butter. Toast in oven on both sides till crunchy. Fill a 13" baking pan with bread chunks. If this doesn't fill up the pan, make more bread or use a smaller pan. Strain and reserve the juice from canned peaches and cut them into bite sized pieces. You want mushy peaches for this. If you are lucky enough to have access to ripe fresh peaches, use them instead. Mix the peaches into the bread. Mix the juice, a splash of real vanilla and enough half and half (milk and cream) to cover the bread. Top with pecans and dust with cinnamon if desired (I hate cinnamon). Bake at 350 till done, maybe an hour. Liquid should be well absorbed into the bread, making it spongey, not soggy. Top should be crunchy. Meanwhile, make a simple syrup using a small amount of hot water and melting a large amount of table sugar into it. Make sure the sugar is fully melted. Once it has cooled, mix equal parts simple syrup and (real) butter and a half portion of nice liquor or liquour (brandy and rum are popular but amaretto or grand marnier are also nice) together with a fork till smooth. Keep sauce at room temperature. Serve the bread pudding hot, with a generous amount of sauce spooned over it. Sorry for the lack of detail, I cook by instinct, not recipe.
@moondrake Added to my list. Thanks!
You may also want to try your hand at Capirotada, a Mexican bread pudding traditionally served during Lent.
@moondrake Awesome. I love bread pudding AND lent!
I would be truly grateful if someone has a bread pudding that's gluten-free and actually accounts for the qualities (note: not "quality," because that would be wrong, because it does not have a quality of quality) of gluten-free bread and isn't just a regular bread pudding with gluten-free bread substituted.
Or, yaknow, at least you've tried it with gluten-free bread and it's delicious.
I love bread pudding. I really don't miss bread per se, just it's pudding.
@joelmw I just found a recipe yesterday. I'll see if I can find it, and then test it.
@phatmass
@joelmw Are you actually Celiac or does this apply:
@joelmw No, but if you come up with a good one, I would buy into a Kickstarter project to produce it. :-D There have been a couple of promising gluten-free Kickstarters I tried to back, but both cancelled. Guess I'll have to stick with Canyon Bakehouse and 3Bakers breads. Great bread, but not for pudding. (And before anyone - @tightwad - asks: yes, like @joelmw, I have celiac disease.)
@tightwad I am, blood test and biopsied. My villi weren't fully atrophied when they caught it, but I was pretty messed up and there was definitely damage. I take it extremely seriously. I can appreciate the fatigue with the fadsters. Yaknow, the thing I don't get is the folks with celiac disease who think it's okay to cheat. If you know anything about the disease and its potential impact on every system in the body, that's just insane. I'm sympathetic to folks avoiding gluten for other reasons (there is a case to be made for both intolerance and the general unhealthiness of too much gluten; thankfully, it's not my job to make that case), but I wish the folks who don't have to be 100% gluten-free would be a little more precise with their language, a little more informed (and rational and consistent) about what and why they're doing whatever they're doing and a little less crazy. Sigh.
Hey there, @rockblossom, where you located? There are some awesome resources here in the DFW area, including a couple of growing GF and even Paleo bakeries. We've got some good GF restaurants too. If you're ever in the neighborhood, I'd be happy to share some of our findings. We have a good GIG group too.
@joelmw The fadsters make it hard for sure, I can't imagine having to deal with that. The problem is that it's not like a peanut allergy that can kill you on the spot, so cheating doesn't have an immediate effect. Good luck sticking to it, sorry for all the goodness you can't have!
@tightwad I often point out that I won't keel over in the restaurant but that they'll be killing me slowly. Though I worry that some might find that an amusing sort of challenge.
@joelmw Thanks for offer. At the moment I am perched here on top of an Ozark. There are GF restaurants and stores with a lot of GF products in my area. Of course "in my area" is a relative term, since the closest restaurant of any kind is about 18 miles away. There's a Celiac Support Group here, too, but they meet about 45 miles from my house.
More than a decade ago there were GF breads, but they were slightly less nutritious (and palatable) than a brick-and-cardboard sandwich. But then I could order a salad (no croutons) and a burger sans bun with no problem. If I do that now, I get the look that says "Oh, one of THOSE people." Or there's something on the menu like barley soup or spelt bread labeled "gluten free" and a wait person who insists that if it isn't wheat, it isn't gluten. (I now trust "gluten free" menus like I trust politicians who say they just want the job to help their constituents. ) Or GF sugar-laden cookies - and I'm very sensitive to refined sugars. So I usually take food with me when I'm away from home. Fortunately, being retired, I can fix food at home and just avoid all the irritating "I don't know what gluten is, but I'm again' it" people.
Soon a new fad diet will come along and all of the Hollywood Elite will switch and take their slavish followers with them, leaving the GF food to us. Sadly, there may be less available because of reduced demand.
The best bread pudding that I ever had was made with cream cheese in it. Unfortunately, the person that made it absolutely refused to share the recipe. I'm looking forward to seeing your favorite recipe at the end of all of this.
@iluvmingos Interesting! Sounds like it'd be tricky to get the consistency right adding something so thick...
Mmmm bread pudding. I only eat it at restaurants. Cinnamon and apples and creme anglaise for starters.
gyou going to kickstart this like the potato salad guy and get like $35,000+ to make bread pudding LOL
Zio's Italian Kitchen (it is a Midwestern chain / thing, and not all that great) had the best damn bread pudding I have ever had . . . but that all changed . . .
For five years that bread pudding was on the menu - it was a staple, always there to comfort you after a meal. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that bread pudding, I was gonna make it a big star. And let me be even more frank, just to show you that I'm not a hard-hearted man, and that it's not all dollars and cents: That bread pudding was beautiful; it was young; it was innocent. It was the greatest piece of pudding I've ever had, and I've had 'em all over the world. And then Johnny Fontane comes along with his olive oil voice and guinea charm, takes over the kitchen and runs it off the menu. He threw it all away just to make me look ridiculous! And a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous!
If you find the (old, ORIGINAL) recipe, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, please post it. The newer version just isn't the same, and they don't always have it available anyway . . .
Please. Help.
I worked in a Po' Folks restaurant for years. It's a shit kickin', aw shucks, family kind of place. Their bread pudding was hugely popular. I don't know how it's made but the base was great big cathead biscuits. I think the dense biscuit was the key to the recipe.
It's something I've never tried at home and would like to. I'll be reading this thread and piecing together a recipe from the ones posted here. It's not to hard to personalize a recipe. Pick the parts that sound like a good match and try it.