Dislike bread pudding for two main reasons – I grew up watching Chopped, and everyone made bread pudding/French toast in the dessert round, and my ex loves bread pudding. That being said, my dear friend Amanda(I have like 8 friends named Amanda, but one of them, just not the Amanda from Masterchef who I think everyone would assume I was referring to), loves bread pudding. Back in college, Amanda and I used to do this thing called Top Chef Thursdays, where we would either eat somewhere cool or cook together, then watch the newest Top Chef. Now, my friendship with Amanda predates my relationship with my ex, and since she was visiting at the time I was writing up this recipe, I figured I had to make it for her. I’m pretty sure that this is the first bread pudding recipe I have on the blog. That’s how infrequently I make bread pudding. For me, bread pudding just sounds a bit basic. Premade stale bread, toasted, and then soaked in a custard, and baked. There’s a reason why it was done so frequently on Chopped. Because it takes not a whole lot of time to make. But we’ll try to make ours a little less boring than that. Starting with what we’re using in this specific recipe. To begin with, I am using bread I made myself – back when I made strawberry sandos, I had a batch of bread that baked off without the rippled color running through it, since I didn’t add enough beet powder to the red dough, it basically looked like a normal bread loaf. Since I didn’t want to throw that bread away, I simply froze it for later. Later became now, and I finally had a recipe that called for bread, and I was finally able to use that botched batch. Now you can use premade bread for this recipe, and that’s probably a lot easier, but I just wanted to get that tidbit out of the way before someone tries to say I used premade bread in this recipe.

For the recipe itself, there are really three components. The bread, the custard, and a cookie dough that is baked on top of the bread pudding. I love the idea of streusel-types of dough baked with bread pudding to add another texture, so in this case, I went with a chocolate-walnut spice cookie, which adds that texture and a little crust on top of the bread pudding itself. The bread, I tossed with brown butter and toasted it, which guarantees that the bread will maintain its integrity when you soak it, and helps dry out the bread a little more so that it can soak in more of that delicious custard that we are pouring over it. The custard is probably the most difficult component from a technical standpoint. We start by making a caramel with just straight sugar, then we add in miso to season it, milk to break, then heavy cream to slowly thin it out to a liquid consistency. Then we add eggs to it to form the custard that we then soak our bread puddings for. I like to soak my bread in the custard for a relatively generous amount of time – at least 30 minutes, if not upwards to 24 hours – just to make sure that the bread is sufficiently soaked. The last thing you want is dry bread pieces in your pudding. For me, a good bread pudding should be buttery and silky in texture, with fluffy, French toast-like pieces of bread that are caramelized and crisped at the edges from being baked. The best way to accomplish that is by making sure your bread has soaked in enough of the custard so that it basically becomes an extension of it.

Makes 10 bread puddings:
For the chocolate chip-walnut cookie dough:
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 tbsp brown butter
1 egg white
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp chopped walnuts
2 tbsp dark chocolate chips

In a bowl, mix together the sugar, brown butter, egg white, vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon. To that, add in the remaining ingredients to form a dough. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes before dividing into 10 even pieces.

For the bread pudding:
12oz bread, cubed
1oz brown butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp miso paste
2/3 cups milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 egg yolk
2 whole eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup chocolate chips

Toss the cubed bread with brown butter, and roasted at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes. In a pot, heat up the granulated sugar until it registers to 290 degrees F, or is golden-brown in color. Add in the miso and milk to that first. Then return the caramel mixture to heat, and stir the caramel on low heat every 5 minutes until the sugars fully dissolve into the milk. Then add to that the heavy cream to thin back out the caramel into a liquid. Pour the caramel-cream into a bowl with the eggs and vanilla, and whisk until combined. Toss the bread cubes in the liquid, and allow that to soak for at least 30 minutes, while refrigerated. Toss chocolate chips through the bread mixture, then divide the bread puddings into 10 cupcake liners and top each with a piece of cookie dough. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.