Ina Garten-Inspired Bread Pudding
The edges are dense and slightly scrambled, the middle is fine. That is a custard problem, and bread pudding recipes almost never treat it as one.
Bread pudding is a baked custard, and egg custard curdles above about 85°C. The sides of a dish in a 180°C oven get far hotter than that long before the centre has set, so the outer inch overcooks while you wait for the middle. Sit the dish in a roasting tin of hot water and the sides cannot exceed 100°C. The whole thing sets at the same rate.
It is one extra tin and a kettle of water, and it is the difference between custard and sweet scrambled egg.
Jump to the recipe ↓Ina Garten-Inspired Bread Pudding
Serves 8 · Dessert
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 1 hr
- Total
- 2 hr
Moderate8 steps, 10 ingredients, over two hours
Ingredients
- 500 g day-old brioche or challah, cubed and dried
- 6 eggs, plus 2 yolks
- 200 g caster sugar
- 600 ml whole milk
- 300 ml double cream
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 100 g raisins, soaked in 3 tbsp rum or hot water
- 2 tbsp demerara sugar
Method
- Dry the bread cubes at 150°C for. Butter a deep baking dish.10 minutes
- Whisk the eggs, yolks and sugar, then the milk, cream, vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Strain it.
- Scatter the bread and drained raisins in the dish and pour the custard over.
- Press a plate onto the surface and leave , until the bread is saturated through.20 minutes
- Heat the oven to 175°C (155°C fan).
- Sit the dish in a roasting tin and pour boiling water halfway up the sides.
- Scatter demerara over. Bake , until set with a slight wobble at the centre.55–65 minutes
- Rest before serving.20 minutes
Dry the bread and weigh it down
Cubes of fresh bread float, and the tops never absorb anything. Dry them in a low oven, pour the custard over, then press a plate onto the surface for twenty minutes. Every cube should be saturated to its centre before it goes into the oven.
Strain the custard
Whisking eggs always produces a few threads of chalaza and the occasional half-beaten white. They set into rubbery specks in the finished pudding. Pouring the custard through a sieve takes ten seconds and removes them all.
The wobble is the doneness test
Nudge the dish. The middle should move as one soft mass, not slosh, and not sit completely rigid. A pudding baked until firm in the oven is firm and dry on the plate — like every custard, it finishes setting as it cools.
Storing
Four days in the fridge. Individual portions reheat well, covered, at 160°C. It freezes for two months, though the texture loosens slightly.
Questions people ask
Do I really need a water bath?
If you want an even custard, yes. Without one the edges will always cook faster than the centre.
What bread should I use?
An enriched loaf — brioche or challah. Sourdough is too sour and too dense; sliced white collapses.
Can I assemble it the night before?
Yes. Cover and refrigerate, then bring it to room temperature for an hour before baking.
Why is mine watery at the bottom?
The bread was not saturated before baking, so the custard had nowhere to go. Weigh it down while it soaks.
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