The Easy Trick for Bread Pudding With the Perfect Texture Inside and Out

In the cold months of winter there’s nothing I love more than burrowing my spoon into a warm, custardy bread pudding. Classic bread pudding wins the dessert game on multiple fronts: it's easy, comforting, crowd pleasing, and can be largely made ahead. My stand-by recipe, which I've perfected over years of testing and honing, features chunks of toasted bread tossed in a vanilla- and cinnamon-scented custard, then layered in a casserole dish and baked until it's pillowy and moist inside with a sweet, buttery, and shatteringly crisp top. It’s cozier than any chunky cable-knit sweater I own.

A Brief History of Bread Pudding

The origins of bread pudding go as far back as the early 11th century in Britain when creative, penny-wise cooks sought to find a use for stale bread. By the 13th century, bread pudding—or "poor man's pudding," because of its popularity amongst England's lower classes—was firmly in the British culinary canon. These early versions of bread pudding were not as luxurious as the kind we know today. Instead of the custardy mixture of cream and eggs with stale bread we love in modern versions, iterations from centuries past were typically made with bread soaked in hot water and squeezed dry before being mixed with sugar and spices and then baked.

Eliza Smith's 1728 The Compleat Housewife was one of the first cookbooks to feature a custard-based traditional bread pudding recipe. Her version featured "a two penny loaf, and a pound of fresh butter,” along with cream, egg yolks, raisins, and currants. 

Nowadays, bread pudding has shed its "poor man's pudding" moniker and elaborate versions are found in restaurants all over the world. But oftentimes contemporary versions of bread pudding are disappointing, varying in texture from mushy, sweetened porridge to the chewy, desiccated cousin of overcooked holiday stuffing. The bread pudding I love has a lightly sweetened, creamy (but not eggy) interior and a crisp top crust. It's a version I've prepared at many restaurants as well as family gatherings. Here’s how to make it at home.

The Best Bread for Bread Pudding

Technically this is a “use any kind of bread” recipe, but I strongly encourage you to use an eggy enriched loaf such as brioche or challah. They’re firm but tender enough to absorb the custard without disintegrating, and their eggy, rich flavor pairs perfectly with the custard. I’ve tested this recipe with ciabatta, a rustic French boule, and even a baguette and these versions still work fairly well, but the drier, more airy loaves absorb less of the custard, resulting in a slightly chewier bread pudding. 

While the early versions of the humble dish relied on stale leftover bread, that’s not the case with this recipe. Here I call for so much bread (more than a pound) that unless you own or work at a bakery, it's unlikely you'll have that much stale bread lying around. Plus, as our Editorial Director Daniel discovered when developing his quick-and-easy French toast recipe, bread pudding is likewise better when it's made with oven-dried bread rather than stale bread. Oven drying the bread delivers the best textures: super crisp and toasty on the outside, while yielding (but not mushy) within. Plus toasting at a steady low oven temperature of 275°F while occasionally stirring the bread cubes guarantees every piece of bread is properly dried out.

The Key Ingredients for a Creamy, Perfectly Sweet Custard for Bread Pudding

This custard gets its rich, silky texture from a combination of whole eggs and additional yolks, along with equal parts milk and heavy cream (or half and half). What begins as a runny mixture that soaks into the bread slowly becomes a velvety custard as the egg yolks cook, coagulate, and thicken. As we point out in our crème Anglaise recipe, egg proteins are made of strands that are tightly bound together when the egg is raw, but when they warm up in the milk and cream, they unfold and detach, and when the mixture reaches 165ºF to 180ºF they will reattach, solidify, and thicken into a smooth custard sauce that enriches the bread.

Because of its relatively neutral flavor, the custard base can also be flavored countless ways by whisking in spices, citrus zest, coffee, or even more. For this basic bread pudding, I kept the seasonings simple. Vanilla extract, ground cinnamon, and nutmeg give this dessert a subtly sweet and warm spiced note. I recommend adding just a teaspoon of orange zest (my favorite) or lemon zest to the custard. The citrus brightens the pudding and balances its rich flavor.

Why You Should Soak the Bread in the Custard Before Baking

Many bread pudding recipes call for tossing the bread with the prepared custard, then transferring the bread to the casserole dish and baking right away or even just pouring the custard over the dry bread in a baking dish. But with both of these methods, once the pudding hits the heat of the oven, the custard starts setting before it has a chance to soak into the bread properly, which results in bread chunks that unevenly absorb the custard, leaving some bites unpleasantly dry and crusty and others overly mushy once baked. But briefly soaking the bread in the custard mixture before baking guarantees that every inch of the bread is saturated so that once baked, it is pillowy soft from edge to edge.

Create a Crisp Topping

It’s inevitable that the oven will dry out the surface of the top pieces of bread as it bakes. To combat this, I decided to offset some of that dryness by brushing the top with melted butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar before baking. The result is a fragrant, sweet, and pleasantly crunchy crust that contrasts nicely with the tender, custardy interior.

Some Great Variations for Bread Pudding

One of my favorite things about this bread pudding recipe is how versatile it is—feel free to experiment! While it’s wonderful in its simplest form without any additions, feel free to stud it with raisins and toasted pecans or any dried fruit or crunchy nut you prefer. You can even add a half cup of fresh fruit, such as raspberries or sliced bananas, into the mix. Not a cinnamon or nutmeg fan? Swap one or both of them for other warm spices, such as allspice, or cardamom. This recipe is extremely forgiving and adaptable to whatever you're craving (or have on hand). However you adapt it, make sure to serve the bread pudding warm—and if you really want to gild the lily, drizzle it with crème Anglaise or a big ol’ scoop of ice cream.