Bread Pudding and Creme Anglaise

[wshaffer]

Well, my Instagram lately has largely been occupied with stuff I've been cooking while at home thanks to the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order for California. Last night I made bread pudding with creme anglaise and have had a couple of requests for the recipe, so here we go.

Bread pudding is tasty, and easy, and a great way to use up bread that's starting to get a bit stale.

Bread Pudding
Ingredients:
half a loaf of bread, cut into cubes
2 cups milk
2 tbsp butter plus a bit more to grease the pan
2 eggs
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground cinnamon
handful of chocolate chips

1. Grease a 9 x 9 pan with butter. Combine the bread cubes and the chocolate chips and put them in the pan.
2. Beat the eggs.
3. Combine the butter, milk, sugar, spices, and vanilla. Heat just until the butter is melted, then remove from the heat and stir in the eggs.
4. Pour the egg/milk mixture over the bread in the pan.
5. Cover the pan and put it in the fridge to soak for a bit. I've let bread pudding soak as long as overnight or as little as an hour.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.

Bread pudding is good on its own, but if you like custard, why not put custard on your custard and make creme anglaise?

Creme Anglaise
2 cups milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Whisk the eggs and sugar together.
2. Heat the milk until it's just steaming. (Not boiling).
3. Slowly whisk the hot milk into the egg sugar mixture. Then pour it back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, while stirring, until the mixture thickens. Don't let it boil. It should reach about 175 to 180 degrees F. The mixture should thickly coat the back of a spoon.
4. Take the mixture off the heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour into a bowl or other container and either use immediately or cool and refrigerate.

This makes way more creme anglaise than you will need for your bread pudding but I'm confident that we can all find uses for creme anglaise in the days ahead.

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