Bread pudding

The bread in my kitchen is too stale for toast. I bought it to eat over the weekend. Then on Saturday my grandfather died. We spent Sunday with my family and the bread got stale.

Of all the things you can do with stale bread, there is only one I want to do right now, and that’s make bread pudding. Bread pudding was my grandad’s favourite thing. I made it for him every year for his birthday and for Christmas. I made it when my nan died. I made him one a few weeks ago, the time before I saw him last.

Bread pudding making is by no means an exact science. The recipe depends very much on what I have in the cupboard, but here is a rough idea.

Take some stale bread, about 250–300g. Cut or tear it into chunks, place in a bowl and soak in water for about half an hour.

While the bread is soaking, collect your other ingredients:

75g suet (if I don’t have any I use butter instead, cold and chopped into small dice.)
125g soft brown sugar
125g dried fruit (currants, sultanas, raisins, mixed peel. I used dates once. That was good.)
25g apple, peeled, cored, diced
1 large egg
1-2 tsp mixed spice
2 tbs rum or bourbon. Today I used quince brandy

Mix it all together in a big bowl, preferably one that looks like this:

Once everything is well combined add the bread to the bowl, squeezing out all the excess water beforehand. Give it another good stir. The bread should break down completely so that you end up with a rather soggy looking mixture:

Transfer to an oven proof dish, sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake in the oven preheated to 180 C (160 fan)/Gas Mark 4 for about an hour and a half until it is golden brown.

Eat warm with custard or, as we always did as children, golden syrup. Or cold. It’s just as good, maybe even better.  The bread puddings I gave my grandad were eaten in a single sitting, in place of dinner.

I am sure there are much more sophisticated recipes for bread pudding around. The rough and ready nature of mine does make the outcome somewhat variable. My grandad told me once, though, that mine was the best bread pudding he’d ever had.