Bread pudding and walnuts

How to prepare a bread and walnut pudding . You had leftover bread and you don’t know what to do with it? Today I explain how to prepare a dessert recipe of the most delicious, a  pudding or pudding, easy and inexpensive , taking advantage of the bread you have from other days.

Its base is bread with what comes to be like our French toast, with which we used the bread of the previous day, but its binder is the egg. Its texture is very similar to egg custard and it accepts many additional ingredients. We will find several types such as  apple pudding  , the one that always triumphs at home, chocolate pudding , a classic since childhood, cookie pudding or the creamiest cheese pudding with red berries . All yummy, do not hesitate.

In today’s recipe we have added some nuts that my father gave me, from the walnuts that we have in the Ribeira Sacra, but accept any dried fruit or what you can think of (macerated raisins, pieces of fruit …), imagination to the power.

The pudding or pudding  has a long tradition in European cooking native of the English or Anglo – Saxon cuisine. Although it is also very famous in Latin America (Argentina, Chile …), it can be eaten hot or cold. And although I do not usually prepare much at home because we eat little bread, when I gather bread of several days and it is hard as a stone it is when I dare to prepare it.

In any pudding or pudding the texture has to be between a sponge cake and a flan , a very creamy recipe. I hope you cheer up and get yummy.

Preparation of caramel for pudding

1. We put a saucepan or a frying pan on the fire at medium temperature so that it reaches temperature.
2. We add the ingredients in the following order: 5 tablespoons of white granulated sugar, a little water (3 tablespoons) and a few drops of lemon.
3. Leave on medium heat without stirring (at first we should not move the sugar with a wooden spoon because it will weigh down) and we will see how little bubbles begin to form little by little and the sugar changes color.
4. When this happens we remove, now yes, with a wooden spoon and we help to mix everything.
5. Remove from the heat and continue stirring until it reaches that roasted honey caramel color. We add a few drops of lemon juice, these will give shine and will not crystallize quickly.
6. Let it warm for a minute and caramelize the container walls of the flaneras or where we are going to prepare the pudding.
7. We put the caramel in the bottom first and we go turning or tilting little by little through the walls of the molds until everything is impregnated with caramel.
8. Let the caramel cool until it is medium hard.

Preparation of the base cream for the pudding

1. It is a very easy recipe, the first step is to prepare the ingredients with which we are going to flavor the milk. We wash the lemon and orange very well.
2. Peel the skin of the lemon in a fine way, without much white that then makes the dessert bitter, grate the orange and reserve.
3. We heat the milk over medium heat almost to the boiling point.
4. We lower the temperature and remove from the heat, add the lemon peel, the zest of the orange, the vanilla essence and finally the cinnamon stick or the teaspoon of cinnamon.
5. We leave everything at a very low temperature for 5 minutes (which is called infusing the milk), remove from the heat and let stand another 5 minutes.
6. Strain the infused milk and add the bread cut into thin slices to the milk. We stir until it begins to soften.
7. We beat the eggs with the sugar and introduce them to the previous mixture. We beat everything until there is a creamy mass.
8. We prepare the caramel as I indicated at the beginning and once done we allow it to temper a miniature. Caramelize the walls of the cake container where we are going to prepare the pudding.
9. First we put in the bottom and we are turning little by little until it is all impregnated with caramel. Let the caramel cool until it is medium hard.

Baking and final presentation of bread and walnut pudding

1. In the oven fill the tray with water and raise it to 200º C until it begins to boil.
2. We put the pudding cream that we had resting in the cake pan. Add the previously floured walnuts so that they do not fall to the bottom of the container and stay in the middle of the pudding.
3. We put it in the oven in the tray with the water for approximately 45-50 m at about 180º C, until the pudding is set and golden. Be careful with the water in the tray. Of course, the advantage is that the oven does not stain anything at all.
4. The last 10 minutes of cooking cover the pudding with aluminum foil so that the top does not burn.
5. Although later it will not be seen because we are going to turn it around. There is usually a layer that is a little hard and it is not pleasant when eating it.
6. Let cool in the fridge, it is much better cold, always from one day to the next.
7. Carefully unmold in a platter and cut into slices to taste. We present and eat it for breakfast or snack, delicious rich.

Be sure to enjoy all the yummy sweets in our dessert recipes . You can see all the photos of the step by step in the next album.  

Tips and trivia to make a perfect pudding

• Do not be afraid of the bain-marie, it seems like a complicated technique but once tested it does not have much trick. You just have to be careful with the hot water when removing the freshly made pudding from the tray to avoid burning yourself.
• The pudding is ideal, even richer when it has been prepared at least a day or two in advance. It makes all the flavors come together much better.
• Be very careful with the freshly made caramel. Do not touch it as it reaches very high temperatures and the burns it produces are very important.
• The pudding or bread pudding can be made with any type of bread. In this case I used village bread but you can try to do it with croissants , sponge cake, brioche , even hard multi-day bread.
• It is a dessert with a lot of Christmas tradition in Latin America, especially in Argentina. It is usually prepared similar to this although with macerated raisins, nuts and candied fruits. Here nougat and there Christmas pudding.
• You can use all kinds of bread that you want. Even as a reader commented, Hotdogs bread that we will no longer use. The base is bread or the like, logically it will taste different depending on what we use, but yummy, for sure.