Bread Pudding has been around since the 11th century and is an excellent way of using up stale bread. Nowadays, shop bought bread doesn’t go stale in the same way as home-made bread, because of the preservatives, but crusts or loaf ends sometimes get left behind, so you can use those. I had a bag of white rolls which Boy the Elder brought back from Scout camp. We ate a couple, but we’re not really white bread people, so they went into the bowl with some seeded, wholemeal crusts which were on the turn.
I made this yesterday evening and we had it hot for pudding with cream and then we all had a slice, cold, for breakfast. And very nourishing it was too; bread, milk, eggs, dried fruit and not too much sugar – that’ll stick ‘em to the ground.
BREAD PUDDING
Utensils:
1 x large mixing bowl
1 x grater
1 x pair of freshly washed hands
1 x oven-proof dish, about 8×10” – buttered
Foil
Ingredients:
8oz / 240g bread
10oz / 300g dried fruit (I used raisins)
2 teaspoons mixed spice (pumpkin spice for the Colonies…)
½ pint / 300ml milk
1 large egg (or 2 bantam eggs)
3oz / 90g dark brown sugar
the grated zest of 1 orange OR lemon
3oz / 90g butter – melted
2 tablespoons demerara sugar*
a little nutmeg to taste
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 160 / 3 / 325
Tear the bread into pieces and place in the large bowl with all the other ingredients except the butter and demerara sugar
Leave to soak for 20 minutes
Mash it all up together with your hands, squeezing and squelching until it’s well mixed
Add the melted butter and stir in well
Pour the mixture into the ovenproof dish
Sprinkle with the demerara sugar and a little nutmeg
Bake for 1 ½ hours, covering with foil for the last half hour to stop it browning too much
Cut into squares and serve hot or cold
* If you haven’t got Demerara sugar, mix 1 tablespoon of white and 1 tablespoon of dark brown sugar together
Wartime Housewife 
This is the most excellent of money-saving ideas, which I’ve been practising for years and years. I save all the end crusts from my home-made loaves, bung them in a bag in the freezer and then when I’ve got enough I make a mega-bread pudding to feed the five thousand. Which gets chopped up into squares which then go back into the freezer for when needed. Which is most of the time in our house. Excellent with custard or ice cream as you say, even a wonderful substitute for xmas pudding if you like something a wee bit lighter. I even introduced this to the cafe where I work, where all manner of things get thrown into it, from scones, to bread to chocolate cake. Yum! Amazingly I seem to be the only person who can make it and it is very popular amongst the older generation.
I made one only yesterday!
Julie xxxxxx
Bread pudding is a most excellent thing and particularly good lunch box fodder. I shall be making one as soon as I have collected enough crusts, quite a challenge at the moment as the teenage boys are eating them before I can do anything creative with them.
I ate a big piece on Saturday, (very, very yummy) and this morning found another under the sofa.
ooo, my mouth is watering!
We love bread pudding in our house, I don’t soak the bread, turn it into beadcrumbs instead. Other than that ingredients etc.are the same.
Hi as my old recipe has been damaged beyond repair I shall try this am sure it will be yummy, but remember that my recipe called for SUET instead of butter!!! Very delicously fattening.
Welcome Tricia and I’m glad to have provided you with a replacement recipe. I, too, have a recipe that contains suet and was actually a wartime recipe, but it was so heavy that I didn’t think it would suit modern palates. This recipe is pleasantly stodgy but is completely digestible!
I have made Bread Pudding for many years – using my Mother’s and Grandmother’s recipe I am now 77 – We soak our bread in water and then wring out with a potato masher add all the other ingredients fruit, sugar, butter and lard melted in microwave now (not by the fire as in years gone by) mixed spice or as someone said Pumpkin Spice plus a teaspoon full of Baking Powder (it used to be Birds Golden Raising Powder a very good product which I can’t get nowaday – put into a greased Lasagne Dish and top with a dusting of sugar – preferably brown sugar – cook for about one and a half hours. No eggs or milk necessary – a pudding from the hard up times of the depression and war years when we had to save our food and money. My family love it.
Welcome Dora and thank you for your lovely evocative comments. I love doing things that my grandmother did – I feel as though it anchors me in a long line of useful women. Bread pudding is such a comforting, filling food and it reminds us how lucky we are today that we don’t have to endure rationing or real hardship. I hope you keep reading.
just found you, and will be pleased to report back ! fed with drizzle food, I pour, do not like food that consists of nothing but odd leaves……and will be a regular I hope…….thank you…..food I grew up with…..(a while ago…)and still think of…and was much slimmer to…..must be something in wholesome food.!
Oh Dora, Just the way I make my bread pud , water ( or left over tea ) to soak the bread, no eggs ( my recipe is from ” The Four Seasons ” by Margaret Costa A book so well worth looking out for , I have been using her recipes for years , yet funny ( says I ) I was doing my bread pud this way in the 1950’s , when I had NO cash, so someone must have told me about this ( or was it my Dads way ?? )
Patricia: When I was a little girl, we still had a bakery in the village and for 10p I could buy a huge, warm slice of bread pudding with the sugar all crispy on the top. Heavenly. It was lovely to start making it again for my children and see them enjoying it on a cold winter’s afternoon.
To wartime housewife, I am so new & self taught on here , I can not see my reply re bread pudding, etc so I could not have done the right things , Sorry , .
I just love this web site , only just found you, but so much my kind of thing .
Thank you
Patricia: As you are a new reader, your first comment goes to ‘approval’ so I can weed out the spam and the time wasters! Once I’ve approved a comment from a reader, they are automatically approved unless I chose to remove them. Your comments are now on the site! I do hope you keep reading; as a magazine style site, I try to include a variety of articles that will appeal to a wide audience – one day an article about pylons, the next day a recipe for chicken pie and I tried to write with a light touch that will make whatever I churn out enjoyable to read, even if you don’t want to make the pie.
Hi tried to make the bread pudding didnt come out to well ,guess i didnt squezze the water out enough,same thing happens when i do crumble always seems to moist,any suggestions,please, Gordon.
Welcome Gordon and thanks for writing in. Re the bread pudding I would suggest that you need to squeeze out more water. With the crumble, did you have the oven hot enough and was the crumble mix thick enough? If it is too thin, the juice from the fruit leaks up and may it squidgy. Do have another go and let me know how you get on.
Hi
Could you please tell me when is the best time to remove excess liquids. As nobody ever say’s remove excess liquid when I was a child many moons ago I followed these recipies to the letter and always got a soggy mess. It’s in my later years that I have realised where I went wrong but I still cannot find a recipe that says when to remove excess. I have tried your recipe and removed excess liquid through a teatowel where it says mush up with hands was not sure if it was best to do it then or after adding melted butter
Carl
Welcome Carl. The recipe I use doesn’t require you to wring any liquid out. Because all the dry ingredients all go into the liquid, the bread and the raisins absorb it. I have used this recipe many times and it’s never soggy but then maybe you like a firmer pudding. Are you cooking it for long enough? In some of the old recipes where you’re using old stale bread and milk and eggs were less readily available, the bread was soaked in water to make it soft and was wrung out before mixing it with the other ingredients. Let me know how you get on and I hope you keep reading.
Hello.
This sounds an interesting recipe, and not too far distant from one I used to make – but I’ve forgotten pretty well all the ingredients except that I do remember that I used Atora beef suet. What I can NOT remember, though, is the quantity: I have a complete packet at the back of my mind, though that now seems rather a lot. But I do remember the method: I didn’t leave the bread soaking for 20 minutes. All I did was put the chunks of bread into a large bowl, pour cold water over them and work them till they were sodden. Then I would immediately squeeze as much of the water out of the mess as I could. and throw away the water. Mix in all the other ingredients, put into a heavily-buttered baking dish, grate nutmeg over the top and cook long and slow (2 hours at 100 Centigrade?). Invariably eaten cold, on its own, it was a firm favourite
Welcome Des. and thanks for your comment. Why don’t you have a go at making this one and let us know how it compares? I always like a bit of feedback. I do hope you keep reading.
Hello. I had a go at your recipe, but didn’t try the result until it was cold, so that I had a reasonable comparison. It turned out quite different from what I expected. I’m sure yours contains many more ingredients than mine did, because it was sweeter, darker in colour and lighter in texture. It also struck me as a dish to be eaten hot, with custard, rather than cold and on its own. I like it, and will surely make it again.
I notice that you do mention in one of your replies to a correspondent that you have a recipe that includes suet. What is it, please?
Des.
Hello Des – thanks so much for the feedback and I’m glad you enjoyed the pud. I will dig out the recipe with suet and add it to this comment as soon as I can.
Thanks.
can you please share the bread pudding recipe using suet .my mom used this ,and it was heavy and stodgy,but so good ,it had to be shared by all the family home or away.,it was always eaten cold
Welcome Robert. I will definitely dig this recipe out imminently – I’m just trying to remember which book it was in, but I will post it soon.
thank you. love your site