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Morning Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Adapted from The New York Times, 12/19/01
Ingredients
- This recipe is from none other than Food52 co-founder Amanda Hesser, back in her earlier New York Times days. (I clipped almost everything she cooked back then. #fangirl) It hails from the same article about holiday breakfasts as the winter fruit salad I shared here years ago. Yes, I basically skipped past this caramel/marscarpone/butter/challah glory for a fruit salad. I can be such a bore sometimes. I suspect I was fearful of it because I thought it would be unbearably sweet and unbreakfast-like, but for me, the beauty of it — well, aside from the actual messy beauty of it — is that it’s not. I ended up removing the 2 tablespoons sugar in the bread part to increase the contrast provided between the faintly tangy bread and the well-rounded sweetness of the dark caramel lid. My other changes were some added quantity and baking vessel notes and a couple tiny ingredient tweaks (salting the caramel for modern times, streamlining the fancy dairy products), plus some notes of warning about the caramel. Finally, Hesser calls for 1/4 cup coarsely chopped toasted almonds to be sprinkled on the bread 15 minutes into the baking time but I never bother.
- If you can’t get mascarpone, creme fraiche would be ideal here. It doesn’t just enrich the batter and add a faint tang, it serves as the dreamiest dollop on served wedges. Sour cream would theoretically work too, but won’t be as rich and smooth one heated. I used whole milk, but suspect low-fat would work just fine here.
- This is an overnight dish, ideally. Set it up before you go to bed and all you have to do when you wake up is bake it and invert it onto a serving dish. The longer is soaks, the more the bread and custard become one, but nevertheless, I think as long as it has an hour to soak, it will be good enough.
- Serves 6 generous or 8 to 10 if other items are on the table. Estimate 1 hour prep time and then about 30 or so minutes baking time in the morning.
- 3/4 cup plus (optional) 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt or just 2 or 3 pinches of a coarse one
- 10 to 12-ounce loaf brioche or challah bread (cut into slices about 1/2-inch thick and about 3 inches square or round, which sounds really persnickety, but they really do fit better in the pan this way)
- 8 large eggs
- 1 cup mascarpone cheese, divided (1/4 cup for custard; 3/4 cup for serving)
- 1 cup milk
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- About 3/4 cup fromage frais or fromage blanc, for serving.
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