Bread Pudding

I love bread pudding, but making it without any dairy was a bit of a challenge. After quite a few attempts, we finally got it. This version is not too sweet, and the combination of almond milk and raspberries gives it an excellent flavor.

A great do-ahead dessert for a large crowd. Although I make it most often with fresh peaches, the recipe works with just about any fruit-nut combo you can dream up, including fresh berries and hazelnuts, fresh pears and almonds, bananas and pecans, or even craisins or raisins and pecans.

This simple, old-fashioned dessert is for chocolate lovers everywhere! Serve it warm or cold, with whipped cream or a dessert sauce.

This bread pudding is savory, not sweet. A melding of the delicious southwestern flavors of corn, chiles, coriander, cumin, and cheese, it makes a wonderful side dish to a roasted loin of pork or beef.

Apples and walnuts ripen at about the same time, and are often grown in the same region. Pair them with a crusty, rustic loaf of bread, some spices, milk, and eggs, and you’ve got a perfect dessert for a fall afternoon. Puddings and bread puddings are particularly easy to make in a slow cooker, and the results are nearly always perfect.

My grandmother used to throw a fit if I ordered something as simple as fruit salad or soup in a restaurant. “Why pay for that? You can make it at home,” she’d say in a voice that made you feel like a fool if you had the temerity to disagree. “Order something else!” Anyone who met my grandmother knew it was best not to cross her. Otherwise, you’d hear about it, repeatedly, for the next three to five years. Minimum. I feel that way about bread pudding. It’s something I want at home, not in a restaurant. My version mingles orange and almond and is a much more refined and luxurious than the usual bread pudding. Enjoy it in the comfort of your own dining room, but pretend you’re eating it in a restaurant, without anyone to harp on you about it. In case any of your guests decides to leave a tip, I’ll gladly accept my 15 percent.

Gluten-free bread was made for bread pudding, which is best made with stale bread, because store-bought gluten-free bread is basically stale to begin with (yes, I said it, but you know you’ve always thought it, too!). To make it even staler, I usually cut it into pieces and lay it out on a baking sheet overnight before making this recipe. Humble, homely, but oh so divine!

Every summer, I get my share of the syrup from my maple trees in northern Vermont that my cousin John taps in the spring. I particularly like the dark syrup he produces, and I devise ways to use it in old-fashioned desserts like this one. I also use the tart apples from a Duchess tree that embraces the house. So I consider this dessert a gift of nature, and I hope you’ll find your own good sources for its ingredients.

Sandy’s mom, Margie (aka Marge), has a passion for bread pudding and is a self-proclaimed connoisseur. This is the only bread pudding out of a pile of test recipes that Marge gave her stamp of approval, noting it was the richness of the vanilla custard that won her over. Go ahead and try it. Marge approves!

This is my idea of fall and winter all wrapped up in a pudding dish! I take basic custard and ratchet it up by adding pumpkin and maple syrup. Then to keep it super-sexy, I use challah, which is a rich, buttery, and slightly sweet bread. This isn’t your ordinary, everyday, bread pudding; this bread pudding is more like cake—and I like cake!

To be fair, bread pudding is an extremely delicious dish that was simply tagged with a terrible name and a rather unfortunate look. As a youngster I could hardly stomach the sight of it, all soggy and sad in its bowl, like a sandwich that had fallen into the pool and then been tossed in the blender. Now that I’m older and smarter, I see the beauty of bread pudding. It’s a day-old visionary’s dream that delivers so much texture and spice it’s suddenly not so hard to understand what keeps it shuffling down through the generations. You can use any bread you choose, just make sure it’s something sturdy.

Panade sounds kind of “chefy” but in truth, the dish, made from crusty bread and lots of cheese, is just a cross between a savory bread pudding and holiday stuffing. When mixed with eggs and cream, the bread softens so it becomes almost soufflé-like, with pillows of puffy goodness infused with chard and caramelized onions. If something can be peasant food and elegant at once, this is it! Pair this as a side with Whole Roasted Chicken with Plumped Raisins, Toasted Pine Nuts, and Arugula (page 142) or serve it with a simple green salad, and you’ve got dinner.

Like barbecue, bread pudding is a dessert with humble beginnings. The dish began as a way to recycle stale leftover bread into a simple filling and dessert through the addition of water and sugar. Today, bread pudding is served at the finest white-tablecloth restaurants, and it is often made with specialty breads and fresh fruit. Instead of water, chefs substitute milk, cream, eggs, vanilla, and spices to create a creamy custard. To make this dessert more decadent, a ladle of rich and creamy sauce flavored with whiskey, rum, or vanilla is poured over the bread pudding.

Essentially a berry bread pudding, the ricotta and eggs in this dessert make it substantial and rich enough to serve for brunch. Serve with a side of maple syrup for breakfast, or a dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream for dessert.

Grace your dinner table with this show-stopping dessert. It’s the perfect end to a southern meal.

This classic charlotte or schaleth aux cerises is adapted from Françoise Tenenbaum, a deputy mayor in Dijon who is responsible, among other things, for bringing meals on wheels to the elderly poor. At a luncheon in the garden of a fifteenth-century building where the film Cyrano de Bergerac, with Gérard Depardieu, was filmed, Françoise described this Alsatian version of an apple, pear, or cherry bread pudding that she makes for her family. Starting with stale bread soaked in brandy, rum, kirsch, or the Alsatian mirabelle liqueur, it is baked in an earthen schaleth mold or, as Escoffier calls it, a “greased iron saucepan, or a large mold for pommes Anna.” Earlier recipes were baked in the oven, for 4 to 5 hours. Françoise bakes hers in a heavy cast-iron skillet or pot for less than an hour, at Passover substitutes matzo for the bread, and, except during cherry season, makes hers with apples.

Bosc pears and Italian blue plums (dried for use in the winter) are fruits that were most often put into kugel. This very old Alsatian Sabbath kugel uses leftover bread that is soaked in water, squeezed to remove any excess moisture, and then mixed with the dried or fresh fruit and left to stew in the oven overnight. Some, like this version, include onions, which add a savory dimension to the sweetness of the fruit and the dough. I love this dish, which I serve in my home for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath as a side dish with brisket.

My friend Mario Piccozzi and I discovered this deluxe version of bread pudding on a winter visit to Merano, the historic resort town in the middle of the Alps, in Alto Adige. It was the perfect dessert on a cold day, served in its baking dish, still warm from the oven. Spooning the pudding onto plates, I was thrilled to find it loaded with apple chunks and walnuts, oozing rich custard and bubbling apricot jam. I make this at home now (it’s very easy) and serve it just as they do in Merano, family-style, setting the steaming, gold-topped pudding in the middle of the table, with a serving spoon and lots of plates. It disappears fast.