Bread Pudding by Vanessa Tay

Bread Pudding

Ingredients: 

 12-16 slices (4-5 cups) stale bread or anything bready, broken up into pieces
4 cups (approx.. 1000ml)  milk (whole is best)
1 stick butter (4 oz) (approx. 113.40g), melted
1 1/4 cup (approx. 160g) sugar (I’ve gotten away with less especially if you’re using sweetened bread)
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Optional ingredients:
dried fruit (raisins, cherries, etc), fresh apple slices, bananas
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method: 

 1. Place broken pieces of bread all over pan. If using fruit, layer some in the middle of the bread and cover with more bread.
2. Beat eggs with vanilla and then mix this with milk, butter and sugar. Whisk to ensure ingredients are mixed evenly.
3. Pour mixed ingredients (custard) over broken bread.
5. Place bread pudding in fridge and let soak for at least 2 hours.
6. Preheat oven to 350 F.(around 176 deg cel)
7. Bake for about 1 hour or until tester comes out clean. If using a deep dish casserole, expect it to take a little longer.

Tips from source (http://www.houseofannie.com/bread-pudding-recipe/):

1. When you’ve assembled the bread pudding and poured the custard over it, leave it in the fridge for at least a few hours if not overnight so that the bread gets to soak up all the yummy custard. This will lead to a more cohesive bread pudding. Also, if you leave it overnight and bake first thing in the morning, you get to enjoy this for breakfast. Yum!

2. The original recipe called for raisins and apples to be placed on top. If you plan to use any fruit in it, especially dried fruit, don’t sprinkle the fruit on top. Instead, bury the fruit in between the bread. That way, the fruit won’t get dried out and burnt on the top (notice how burnt my apple slices got on top?).

3. The better the bread, the better the bread pudding. If you use wonder bread or really cheap white bread, you’re going to get gummy bread pudding.

4. Stale bread works better than fresh bread (you should be EATING your fresh bread anyway). But if you absolutely have to, I guess you could get some fresh bread to make this (toast it first to dry it out a little). OR, do like me, and go to those bread shops that sell day-old bread and buy some OR go to your favorite bread vendor at the farmer’s market and ask if they have day-old bread to sell to you.