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FRENCH FOOD FOCUS Latest Post Other Posts Recent Older Truffles Cassoulet Index of Recipes L inks House Sitters FiFi About me About 'My' France Comments to: yankinparisot@gmail.com Archives		Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts concerning life in France and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy. If you have some good recipes or if you want to rave about any great French restaurants this is the place to do it. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France! Click Here to send me a comment
		This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right.
	BREAD PUDDING RECIPE There are those times when having some nice comfort food is almost a necessity. Such a time occurred for Linda last week. She'd had some dental surgery which was scary in & of itself and was very sore afterwards. Obviously it was difficult for her to eat, especially anything that had to be chewed much. Bread Pudding to the rescue! Now, I haven't made bread pudding for years in fact I can't remember the last time I did make it. So I cruised the net for recipes. As you can image there were hundreds to choose from, but not quite did it for me. I liked parts of various ones, but none of them put everything together. Thus I decided to make up my own recipe. Here it is, nothing special but my variation. I was pleased with the way it turned out and Linda was delighted that here was something she could eat & enjoy. She had seconds, a good sign. Here it is: INGREDIENTS: Day old bread. Just about any kind. I used a combination of white baguette & whole grain from our local baker. Whole milk Full cream a splash of dark rum Sugar. Or in this case I used splenda to save calories. I think dark brown sugar would also be great. Ground nutmeg, cinnamon & ginger to taste Raisins. As many as you like METHOD: Tear the bread into chunks of roughly one inch square. Crusts & all. I did about 8 cups loosely packed. Heat your oven to 190 C. Mix the milk & full cream. The ratio of cream to milk depends upon just how rich you want the pudding to be. I used about 2/3 milk. Make about half as much of this mixture as you have of the bread, thus in my case I did 4 cups of milk. Add the sugar & spices. Use about half as much sugar (or splenda) as you have milk. In my case 2 cups. Pour the milk mixture over the bread pieces. The milk should just barely cover the bread, if not add a bit more milk or push the bread down into the milk with the back of a spoon. Let the mixture sit for 20-30 minutes then add the raisins. Stir very gently to distribute the raisins. Pour the mixture into a shallow casserole and put the filled casserole onto a baking tray to prevent spills. Bake in the 190 C oven for about half an hour or until the top starts to brown. *You can test by sticking a knife into the pudding to see if it comes out clean. Remove from the oven when done. You can serve hot, warm or cold. Its equally good the next day & it freezes well. Ice cream, cream, crème fraiche all make nice topping sauces. It truly is delicious and it truly is comforting. I'll make it more often now that I've rediscovered it.