Dominican Bread Pudding

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting a different bread pudding variation recipe. These were all done last year, as a project for an Advanced Baking Skills class. I’ve started off with the Control recipe, but you’ll be able to see this same recipe adapted and become: Vegan Bread Pudding, Dairy-Free Bread Pudding, No Sugar Added Bread Pudding and Reduced Calories Bread Pudding!

1. Pre-heat  oven to 350F.
2. Tear the bread into small chunks in a large bowl.
3. Whisk eggs with baking powder in a separate bowl.
4. In a sauce pan, combine milk, sugar, vanilla and butter and bring to a simmer.
5. Temper into the eggs and then pour over bread chunks, allowing them to soak up as much liquid as possible.
6. Butter and dust with brown sugar the pan and pour bread mixture into pan. Bake for an hour or until golden brown and cooked but still moist.
7. Syrup: place prunes, water and sugar in small pot until it reduces to a syrup consistency. Flavored as desired with rum and vanilla.
8. Pour hot syrup over hot bread pudding and let sit.

Step into Bread Pudding History obtained from The Food Timeline, a great site to learn about the history of food:

[1824]
“Bread pudding
Grate the crumb of a stale loaf, and pour it in a pint of boiling milk, let it stand an hour, then beat it to a pulp; add six eggs, well beaten, half a pound of butter, the same of powdered sugar, half a nutmeg, a glass of brandy, and some grated lemon-peel; put a paste in the dish and bake it.”
—The Virginia Houswife, Mary Randolph, facsimile 1824 edition with historical notes and commentaries by Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p. 150) 

I like my bread pudding served COLD. I know traditionally Americans eat bread pudding warm, with an accompanying sauce and ice cream. Try this and you’ll love the simplicity of it, making you a bread pudding lover for life!  What’s your favorite bread pudding recipe? Share a link!