The Slapdash Cook

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It’s fall in Southern California, which means it’s dropped to the low sixties and weather wimps like me are wearing jackets. More importantly, fall produce is coming out. And around here, fall means the Jewish High Holidays, which is indirectly how we ended up with a gigantic, slightly stale, round challah loaf — J. brought it home from Yom Kippur services. We dismantled it last weekend, making it into a fine batch of French toast, about a pint of breadcrumbs that went into the freezer, and the subject of this post — bread pudding made in my old friend, the slow cooker.

Bread pudding turns out to be a highly flexible dish as long as you make sure you respect the ratio of milk and eggs to other stuff. Too little liquid or binder and you’ve got a dry, unpleasant dish. I imagine too much would be unpleasantly eggy, but I am too frugal with eggs to raise the ratio of eggs to milk too much.

I mainly used this recipe, but with substantial tweaks — in addition to using skim milk, I reduced the sugar by a third and added a bunch of fruit and spices. I also didn’t bother scalding the milk because no other recipe I read called for that, and I’m not even sure how to do it and am not interested in washing an extra dish if I can avoid it. If you make this, I do recommend using a higher-fat dairy product than skim milk; the finished product was good, but lacked the richness that I associate with bread pudding. I also recommend topping this with whipped cream if you have it.

Slapdash Slow Cooker Bread Pudding
Serves two people three or four times each. Makes a lot.

Four cups cubed stale challah or other bread
2 1/4 cups milk, or mixture of milk and cream, or all cream if that’s how you roll
Two eggs, beaten (egg whites would work)
1/2 cup brown sugar (white or turbinado would work fine)
dash of salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
dash each of nutmeg, ginger and cloves — I went heavier on the nutmeg.
about a tablespoon of melted butter — whatever was left over from the French toast. I’m not actually sure what the point of this is besides to add fat, but I thought I ought to try it.
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup of raisins, diced apples or other fruit that would go nicely (optional)
generous handful of walnuts or other nuts (optional)
grated fresh ginger (optional — I threw it in at the last minute just because I love ginger)

1. Grease the slow cooker (I used cooking spray) and put in the bread cubes, dry.

2. Beat the eggs, add milk and everything else but the fruit and nuts.

3. Pour the milk mixture over the bread cubes. Push the cubes down gently with a spoon to make sure they get soaked. Add the goodies.

4. Spy fresh ginger at last minute and decide to grate some. The recipe actually says not to stir, so I don’t recommend doing it this way, but I did.

5. Turn on low and ignore for 5-6 hours! It ended up being closer to 5:30 for me. Some of the recipes I read mentioned that it burns if you let it go too long, which I suspect is also a danger of using the “high” setting. You can tell it’s done when the eggs have set — i.e., it’s not liquid-y anymore.

I had planned to make a dessert sauce, since we don’t have cream around, but plain yogurt is making a fine topping as well.