Bread and Butter Pudding - Restaurant Quality Recipe

Recipe: Bread and Butter Pudding Recipe »

This restaurant quality bread and butter pudding is pure comfort. Made with buttery sourdough, a rich vanilla custard, currants and sultanas, it's baked until luscious and then finished with a toasty bruleed sugar topping. It is a perfect make ahead dessert to serve with vanilla ice cream and the recipe came from a chef that was kind enough to share the recipe with me.

About This Bread and Butter Pudding

This bread and butter pudding is incredible. Rich and ingeniously bruleed on the outside, it had me swooning with its buttery, toasty exterior. I first tried it at the restaurant Social Dining where it is their signature dessert and has appeared on the menu ever since it opened. Chef Anthony Musa was kind enough to share his recipe with me. He explained that it originally came from Chef Matt Kemp from Restaurant Balzac.

Why You'll Love This Bread and Butter Pudding

It uses simple ingredients - nothing fancy needed here. Bread, eggs, cream, sugar, butter, currants and sultanas. But it tastes so much more than just the sum of its parts.

It's a low waste dish. Got some slightly stale sourdough bread? Perfect!

While the ingredients sound typical of a bread and butter pudding, the method is what makes this truly special. This is a dessert to serve to friends and family.

Toasting the outside of the pudding is seriously genius. It gives it a buttered toast quality.

Video How To Make Bread and Butter Pudding

Video: Bread and Butter Pudding Recipe

Ingredients For Bread and Butter Pudding

Cream - Use thickened cream (common in Australia) or double cream.

Vanilla - Vanilla bean paste or extract is best, essence is also fine.

Egg yolks - I know 8 is a lot of egg yolks but that is what gives this restaurant quality result; trust me!

Sugar - Caster or superfine sugar is ideal for this.

Salt - To balance the sweetness. It won't taste salty I promise!

Sourdough bread - White sourdough bread. Save the grain or rye for breadcrumbs as it won't work here.

Butter - Salted butter (you know me!).

Dried fruit - We are using currants and sultanas or raisins in this.

Icing or powdered sugar - Sprinkle this on top of the slice of pudding and then blowtorch for that crispy toasty texture.

Tips For Making Bread and Butter Pudding

1 - The key is to slice the bread for this pudding thinly so that it absorbs all of the custard.

2 - We aren't fully cooking the custard before adding it to the pudding. The cream is the only part that is heated. The custard will cook and thicken further in the oven.

3 - It's important to press down on the pudding when soaking it (step 2) and adding more custard as the bread absorbs more. Also ensure that the top layers are soaking in the custard by pressing down.

4 - If you don't have a blowtorch you can place the top of the pudding under a grill to toast it.

5 - All this bread and butter pudding needs is a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If you prefer one with custard, try this Bread and Butter Pudding with Madagascan vanilla custard.

I also love this Louisiana Bread and Butter Pudding and this Turkish Fig Pudding with Turkish bread and fig jam is divine. And even if you don't have bread, you can also make a pudding out of crackers like Matzo with this Matzo chocolate and raspberry pudding.

Bread and Butter Pudding Recipe

A Recipe by Lorraine Elliott, adapted from Chef Anthony Musa

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 30 minutes plus 1-2 hours resting time

Cooking time: 75 minutes

Serves: 8

This recipe is best made 1 day ahead of time

Ingredients Needed

For Custard

• 750ml/3 cups/25fl oz thickened or double cream
• 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste
• 8 egg yolks
• 190g/6.7oz caster or superfine sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For Pudding

• 420g/15oz sourdough bread
• 240g/1 cup melted butter
• 1 cup/140g/5oz currants
• 1 cup/140g/5oz sultanas or raisins

To Finish

• 2-3 tablespoons icing or powdered sugar

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 CUSTARD - Heat the cream and vanilla in a saucepan until simmering. Meanwhile whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a mixer until thick and fluffy. Gradually pour the hot cream into the egg mixture in 5-6 lots whisking well. Set aside to cool completely (if in a hurry, place in an ice bath for 20 minutes stirring every 5 minutes or so). This can be made the night before.

Step 2 BUILD - Have a 27x19x6cms/10.6x7.5x2.4inch baking dish plus a larger baking dish for the bain marie ready (a larger dish with high sides). Slice the bread very thinly. You want it sliced around 0.5cm/0.2 inches in thickness. If the bread is very large, cut in half. Brush bread with the melted butter on both sides and scatter the currants and sultanas evenly over the layers and repeat with the remaining bread. Pour over the cooled custard allowing it to soak up for at least 1 hour (2 hours is ideal). You may have to add some every 30 minutes or so and you may not be able to add all of the custard in and. Press down on the top with a spatula every 10 minutes to ensure the top layer is also soaked.

Step 3 BAKE - Preheat oven to 160C/320F fan forced or 180C/350F conventional. Cover with parchment and then cover with foil. Bring a kettleful of water to the boil and place the baking dish in a larger baking dish. Pour boiling water halfway up the side to make a water bath and then gently slide the tray into the oven and bake for 50 minutes. Cool to room temperature and then refrigerate overnight, weighing the pudding down with a platter and cans or containers of food.

Step 4 BRULEE - Slice the pudding into squares and place on a parchment lined tray. Reheat in an oven at 160C/320F fan forced or 180C/350F conventional for 15 minutes. Place slices on plates and sieve icing sugar on top of the pudding. Brulee with a blowtorch and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Personal Note

This recipe is all about winter and comfort and I made this just after June started and we needed a bit of winter warming.

I mentioned before, how I had to stay inside because I got laser done on my skin (which is also something I waited until winter to do). You are supposed to stay indoors for a fortnight but on day 10 I had to go away to the Hunter Valley for work. I wasn't sure how much outdoor activity there would be. Usually it's going to restaurants but there was a bit of outdoor time so I had to bring along an enormous hat. This hat was so enormous it almost has a postcode of its own.

I was with a group of seven writers and every where I went, my hat cut off all peripheral vision so I would accidentally ignore everyone that was near me. It is the perfect hat for anyone that wants to ignore people or not talk to people but for me I felt like I was missing out on everything and blocking everyone from me! And over lunch and dinner I had to lift the enormous sides of the hat so that I could see the person next to me! However some people said that it would be the perfect hat for them as they often didn't feel like talking to people.

So tell me Dear Reader, would you like a hat that hid you away? And do you like bread and butter pudding?