Gale Gand’s Whiskey Bread Pudding
Mike loves bread pudding. And since I had some stale bread sitting around, I decided to make some. I never throw out stale bread unless it’s gotten moldy and gross…there’s a lot you can do with it. Usually it goes into the food processor and becomes bread crumbs, sometimes it becomes croutons for salad. But this was the first time I tried making bread pudding. I liked that I already had everything I needed to make it on hand, no trip to the store was necessary.
Gale calls for a whole loaf of French bread, but honestly, you can use whatever you have on hand. I had the end of a loaf of oatmeal bread, and some crusty Italian olive oil bread, and that was enough to fill an 8 x 8 baking dish. These were both breads that I made in my bread machine, and got stale before we could finish eating them. I didn’t bother cutting off the crusts, the soaking in the custard softens it enough for our taste.
If you don’t have any stale bread on hand, look at the day old bread shelf at the grocery store.
You have to plan ahead a bit for this, as the recipe calls for the pudding to be soaked overnight in the custard before baking.  After I poured the custard over, I mixed it around a little to make sure all of the bread cubes were coated.
The recipe calls for raisins and pecans, but either or both could be left out, if you don’t like them. Also, pecans are expensive, something like ten bucks a pound. If we didn’t happen to have any on hand, I wouldn’t have bothered to buy any. You could probably use the much cheaper walnuts instead.
The whiskey sauce is a must. I had two bottles on hand…a cheap Canadian brand called Black Velvet, and some Old No. 7 (Jack Daniels). The Canadian, according to Mike, is good to drink, but is not good for cooking because it doesn’t have a big flavor. I rarely drink hard liquor myself, but I did try this in cooking once, and he’s right. You’d may as well just use water, the flavor cooks out quickly with cheap Canadian whiskey.
Also, since this is a Southern-style recipe, using the Jack Daniels makes it more authentic. Old No. 7 has a big flavor and is excellent for cooking. In fact, I’m going to be making a fried chicken dish later this week, with bourbon gravy, and Jack makes all the difference.
If you do not wish to consume alcohol (and NO, it does NOT all cook out…Alton Brown said so, and I believe him), you can mix the cornstarch with plain water. It won’t be the same, but probably still good. If you want something with more flavor, I’d suggest apple juice or cider…the flavor of apple goes well with the cinnamon-raisin thing that’s going on here. I’ve only made this with the Jack Daniels, though, so I can’t vouch for this personally…just an educated guess here.
So, the next time you are thinking of throwing out stale bread, STOP…and give this recipe a try. If you love bread pudding, you may consider this the best you’ve ever had!
