- Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I,
John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious
homemade dishes to share with your family and friends.
Today, it is an amazing bread pudding,
with big cubes of rich brioche bread,
completely saturated by a delicate, perfectly sweet custard,
all enrobed in a bread pudding sauce,
with just a touch of brandy in there.
Shh, it's our secret.
Let's get started.
First off, the bread.
So, you're gonna want enough bread to fill
like an eight by eight inch baking dish.
Traditionally, bread pudding is a great use for stale bread.
So, if you have some stale bread hanging around the house,
make a bread pudding with it.
However, Brian's mom is in town,
and I wanna make her an extra special treat,
so we're gonna use brioche,
which is a rich, egg based bread.
Unfortunately, it's not stale, it's fresh from the market.
So, we're gonna toast it up really quickly,
after we give it a cut.
Cut your bread into roughly one inch pieces.
Look at this brioche, oh my gosh, so rich.
In this dessert,
the bread and the sauce are really the stars.
If you love raisins, you can of course,
add raisins to bread pudding.
Toasted pecans, there's so many
delicious things that can be added to this.
Trying to cut these pieces as efficiently as possible.
They don't all have to be exactly the same size at all.
I'm about to have some Virgo feelings
over this bread cutting.
(laughing)
Not gonna lie.
So, because I'm using fresh bread instead of stale,
I wanna remove some of the moisture,
so we're gonna give it a quick toast in
the oven at 250 for about 10 minutes.
There we go, push that on to a baking sheet.
If you wanna skip this step, just go to the market and
ask for some stale bread before they throw it out,
or feed it to the birds.
In to the oven, 250.
Keep an eye on it, so it doesn't singe.
But, should be fine.
While that bread's drying out in the oven,
we're gonna make a simple custard
that will just fill every nook and cranny,
and bake up into some amazingness.
Here's the deal.
Three tablespoons of butter.
1/2 a cup of sugar.
Two cups of milk.
I warmed my milk up a bit in the microwave first,
just so it's not ice cold,
and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt.
There you go.
All right, we're going to mix this up a bit,
and then place it over medium heat, and just scald it.
We want it to be almost getting to bubbling.
The butter's already melted.
The sugar's dissolved, and once it scalds,
where you see just a little bit of bubbling on the edge,
I'm gonna take it off the heat.
If you love custard, click up here for my eclair recipe.
It is so good,
and filled with a pastry cream that's similar to this,
but a little bit thicker, so it can be piped.
All right, so it's scalded.
Bubbling on the edge, we're all done.
Taking it off the heat, and it'll need to
cool down for just a couple minutes.
My bread's just out of the oven,
and it's nice and crisp now so,
it's gonna accept that custard and really just be amazing.
The custard is almost done.
It's just cooling down before I add the eggs and vanilla.
But in the meantime, let's just grease our baking dish.
You don't have to go crazy here.
It's not gonna be really a sticky situation.
But, a little butter goes a long way in not having a mess.
Baking dish greased, let's add in our bread and,
if you see any big pieces, you can rip them up.
You kinda wanna have less gaps on the bottom,
so just push them around and,
if you have any extra bread left over,
croutons, just keep baking them, hello.
That's good.
What I like to do is just take some of
the crust side and place it up on top,
so I have a little bit of contrast
in the finished bread pudding.
And also, if I see any holes, I can just fill them in
and everything will be nice and comfy cozy.
Now, I'm setting this aside.
Let your milk mixture cool down so it's warm.
It could be like warm, warm, but not hot.
So, you don't wanna scramble those eggs.
They need to be nice and silky, not chunky.
All right, I'm gonna add in
one tablespoon of vanilla right now.
If you want, you could add in a few tablespoons of brandy,
or whatever else, but I'm keeping that for the sauce,
not for the bread pudding.
Okay, now it's time for the eggs.
just whisk them in and, we're gonna be set.
There we go.
So you can see, I still have a nice,
smooth consistency, it's not curdled or anything.
It's just a matter of waiting, so don't rush it.
I'm gonna reserve about like let's say
1/3 of a cup of this custard.
Now we're gonna carefully pour it over the top.
Try not to spill.
I wanna make sure there's no
dry pieces lurking around on top.
Now I wanna show you,
because there's all this liquid in here,
we can begin pushing down some of the bread,
because even though we tried, there were some air gaps here.
Don't smash, but just gently kind of let the bread
find the bottom of the pan.
I have my reserved bit of custard,
and I'm just gonna spoon that over the top,
or pour it over the top,
just 'cause I can see a couple pieces of bread that are dry,
and that's not the life I'm living.
My bread pudding is ready to go in to
the oven at 350 for about 40 to 50 minutes.
You don't want the bread to burn.
You want it to be beautiful, golden brown on top.
So, if you see any little spikes that are
starting to burn towards the end of the bake,
cover it in foil, and let it continue to bake.
That'll help you out.
This smells so good, I can't even tell you.
Just wait 'til it goes into the oven.
Now, we're gonna make our delicious sauce.
It is one of my very most favorite things to eat,
and I'm saying that for real real.
I have two cups of milk that I scalded or
made really hot in the microwave.
It's not a true scald, but it'll work.
And now, in a small pot,
I'm adding two tablespoons of butter.
I'm gonna put this on heat,
add some flour, whisk it together,
we're making a delicious, sweet, white sauce.
Ah, my mouth's watering already.
Let's go on to the oven.
Once your butter's melted, add in two tablespoons of flour,
and whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk.
This is where you're creating a roux,
so just cook the butter and flour for
about a minute while you whisk it up.
After a minute, and a little bit of browning,
slowly pour in the two cups of milk while you whisk.
You can take a break and keep whisking it up.
Adding the milk in gradually gives you a thick,
silky sauce with a great consistency.
After the milk goes in, add in 1/2 cup of brown sugar.
Wow.
This is where that magic happens.
You don't have to use brown sugar for this recipe,
but it adds a little bit of depth of flavor, which I love.
Okay, you can see the consistency's starting to thicken up.
Once it starts thickening up,
keep an eagle eye on it, and whisk, whisk, whisk.
That's when it can bubble over, so be careful.
Sauce is appropriately thickened.
Taking it off the heat.
Now I'm adding in three tablespoons,
that's a very liberal three tablespoons of brandy.
A lot of the brandy's gonna cook off.
You're not gonna get a big hit of alcohol,
but if you want, you can use two tablespoons of
vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract instead.
This can be set aside to cool down
a bit while we work on the rest.
My bread pudding just came out of the oven,
and I want to show you a couple things.
First off, if you don't wanna make the sauce,
sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.
Just a little bit of powdered sugar.
It looks great.
After a half an hour of baking,
I was keeping an eye on things,
and I covered it with foil for the last 10 or so minutes,
just so it didn't over brown.
I want it to be nice and golden on top.
I like to spoon over,
let's say half of the sauce first, right after baking,
so the bread pudding really absorbs it all.
Even though it's filled with custard,
there's a little bit of space for the sauce.
You don't have to use all the sauce if you don't want.
You can reserve some for later.
It heats up really well and, it is delicious on ice cream.
In fact, this whole dessert is
an excellent make ahead thing.
You can just pop it in to the oven to warm up again,
or reheat the individual servings.
If your white sauce ever curdles, don't throw it away.
Put it into a blender and whiz, whiz, whiz,
whiz, whiz, while it's still warm.
If it's being extra finicky,
you can add like a little bit of cream or water in,
just like a tiny drizzle, and blend it up,
and it should come back to life and be super silky.
I'm gonna let this soak for a minute,
and then we're going to cut it and
add more off the sauce on top.
All right, I'm gonna cut a piece for
everybody in the house, but me first.
Okay, that is what I call a delicious bread pudding.
All right, just a little bit extra,
who would wanna say no to that?
Look at this.
If you like this recipe, check out my eclair video.
It has everything you could
ever want in a dessert, and more.
Now it's time for a bite, though.
Look at that.
Oh my God, the texture is beyond.
Little dab in that sauce.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, I love this recipe because,
you can make it, enjoy it, and there's some left for later,
and it keeps for so long in the fridge.
You can keep it for days and days.
Just warm it up again,
and add some more of that warm sauce on top.
Oh, my mouth is watering.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you like this video, hit that like button and subscribe,
and I'll see you in the next video.