How To Make Sweet Bread Pudding

Sweet bread pudding is where leftover stale bread gets a second chance at greatness. It’s possible you’ve only ever had this dish of warm, custard-soaked bread at fancy restaurants, but I firmly believe that bread pudding needs to be made more often at home. It is basically an upgraded French toast, after all — all the soft middles and all the crunchy edges in one fabulous, crowd-pleasing dish.

Bread pudding is a form of baked custard. A sweetened mixture of milk and eggs is poured over staled bread in a baking dish and the two are baked together until the bread is pudding-like — lush and creamy — and the top is golden and tender crisp. The best bread pudding is as simple as making a very good (and very easy) custard and pouring it over the right bread.

For a truly outstanding bread pudding, brioche is the bread you want. This type of bread is rich and slightly sweet, and it will soak in that cream like a sponge. Beyond brioche, you can use just about any rich, sweet bread you have, from challah to leftover cinnamon rolls.

Regular white bread, French bread, or artisan country bread also makes a very good bread pudding. This is a good option for those times when we’re not quite up for the over-the-top decadence of a brioche pudding. Just avoid using sourdough loaves or hearty whole-wheat loaves — the savory flavors in those loaves don’t make them suited to a sweet bread pudding.

• This recipe uses a whole loaf of brioche, about 1 pound.
• Don’t skip the cream in the recipe!
• The bread pudding bakes for 45 to 55 minutes or until the bread pudding reaches at least 160°F in the center and is golden-brown on top.

• Toast the bread cubes first. Even if your bread is a few days old, I still like to toast the cubes for a few minutes in the oven to make sure they’re completely dry. It might seem counter-intuitive to dry out bread cubes when the next step is mixing them with milk and eggs, but drying them makes them better able to absorb the custard and gives the pudding a better texture.
• Let the bread soak up the custard. It’s also important to let the dish sit for a while before baking to give the bread cubes time to fully absorb the custard. Give the dish at least an hour for this, but even better is making the pudding the night before, letting it chill overnight, and baking the pudding the next day.
• Bake until creamy but set. Unlike quick breads, a tester inserted in the bread pudding might still come out wet even when the custard is set — look for a golden-brown top and a center that jiggles but doesn’t wiggle, and make sure an instant-read thermometer reads at least 160°F.