[Smashy the Hammer] [An Aspiring Luddite]
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An aspiring Luddite
In a wired world.
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[Jeff Berry]
Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Bread Pudding
06 February 2016
[Bread Pudding]

We came home from a medieval Sunday at our usual meeting spot in Linton - the one on the river Wharfe near Wetherby, as opposed to Linton-on-Ouse, which is on the Ouse and located about twenty miles north-east of this Linton - with a loaf of not-terribly-exciting bread. After trying it for toast and finding it inferior to my sturdy home-made sourdough bread with oats in, I decided to make bread pudding out of it. The mushy texture cried out for something which didn't require any real structure.

I decided to go for a pudding which was not very sweet, and top it with sweetened cream, for a little extra moistness and creamy deliciousness. [Lots of pictures]

Bread Pudding

Cut or tear the loaf into chunks, the size doesn't matter very much if the bread is soft enough. I went for roughly one inch cubes. If your bread has much of a crust, you might want to trim it off, in the interest of giving the final result a more even texture. Dice the apples, not too finely, and mix them and the dates with the bread. You want an even distribution, so you may end up layering them to some extent - I did. Note the lack of any added sugar; the apples and dates provide the sweetness.

Lightly beat the eggs and milk together, add the spices and mix well. The cumin was an experiment. I wanted something more than just cinnamon, and while I would usually have used coriander, I didn't have it to hand. If you do want to try the cumin, go easy on it. Pour the liquid over the bread and fruit and squish it down. Put it into a 175C/350F oven for an hour.

When it comes out, the cumin should have given it a lovely fragrance but not have had a large effect on the flavour, only adding a few grace notes to the palate. I served it with heavy cream which had been sweetened by mixing in some confectioners/icing sugar.


© 2016 Jeff Berry
The Aspiring Luddite