Savory Rosemary Gruyere Bread Pudding

Back when the Food Channel still had cooking shows, I remember watching an episode of Emeril Live where he made savory cheesecakes.  And I thought, "we need to tell the Cheesecake Factory, they're sitting on a gold mine".  While I have still never seen one in person, I started questioning all of my dessert beliefs: can I eat this earlier in the meal, before I hate myself?  Can't I find a way to avoid a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar and still have a delicious baked good?  And, most importantly, can I find a way to put more bacon in this?

And now, you can.  As I was staring down about $5 of unused, questionable rosemary bread from the farmer's market, The idea struck me like a stale loaf of bread to the dome.  This was not to be another farmer's market total loss.  So I sliced the bread up into large cubes in anticipation of my further pleasure.

What ensued was, quite possibly, one of the most delicious things I have ever made.  Crispy, rich, smoky, and with that pine forest smell from the rosemary both baked into the bread and freshly added to the dish, you could easily get lost in this "pudding", which I would describe as either the best stuffing you've ever had, or a meal that combines the best of breakfast, dinner, and dessert.

I will confess that I lifted a few components of this recipe from a fellow blogger here, but then went and updated with a better process and a few ingredients, not the least of which is bacon.  I highly recommend you do two things - use stale bread (slice it up one day before it's too hard to slice, then cube it and leave it in a bowl to dry), and let the custard mixture soak into the bread for at least 8 hours.


Rosemary-Gruyere Bread Pudding

• 5 cups of cubed, stale Rosemary or French bread, crusts removed
• 1 tablespoon butter, plus more for greasing pan
• 3/4 cup chopped sweet yellow onion such as Vidalia
• 1/4 cup of chopped shallots, or 1 large
• 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, about 2 cloves
• 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 healthy pinch of black pepper
• 2 thick-cut slices bacon, preferably applewood smoked
• 1.5 cups of milk (I used 2%)
• 1 cup of heavy cream
• 4 eggs, beaten lightly
• 1 cup of coarsely grated Gruyere cheese, separated in half

A few days to a few hours before, cube the bread into 1" cubes and place in a bowl to dry.  Toast bread cubes just before using to remove remaining moisture and brown slightly, and place in a large bowl.  In a medium bowl, beat eggs and add in milk and cream.

Toasted bread cubes, next to the egg custard soak.  Treat this as you would a delicious pan perdu, or French toast

In a large saute pan, melt butter and cook onion and shallots over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 3-5 minutes.  Add some of the salt partway through to pull out some moisture.  Now add rosemary and garlic and stir in for 1 minute.  Remove all from pan, and cook bacon until slightly crispy.  Drain on paper towels, then chop bacon into 1/4" pieces.

Into a large bowl, place toasted bread cubes, vegetable mixture, bacon pieces, egg - milk custard mixture, and half of the cheese.  Toss well to combine but don't stir so aggressively that you break up the bread cubes.  Cover with plastic wrap and place in fridge for 1-8 hours.

Before the long rest and soak

After an 8 hour rest in the fridge.  Totally soaked up the egg mixture, fat and happy and ready for the oven

When ready to cook, grease an appropriate casserole with butter, and heat oven to 350 F.  Lightly spoon in bread pudding mixture into the dish (do not pack this in tightly, it will get mushy), and place in oven, uncovered, for 40 minutes.  After 40 minutes, top with remaining grated cheese, and return to oven for 10-15 minutes longer, until browned and melted.  Allow to cool for 15 minutes and serve.

Served simply, where the bread pudding can be the star

Pain Perdu Farci (Stuffed French Toast)

The French have an excellent tradition - stale bread reclaimed by soaking overnight in a mixture of eggs and milk, and then fried.  This is called pain perdu, which translates as 'lost bread', for obvious reasons.  I hadn't had the overnight soaked version, just the standard nasty processed white bread dipped for 4 seconds before frying, and so I thought I'd give this a shot.  Whoa.

First of all, the custard that you make to soak the bread in smells so good, you basically want to eat it right there.  Think of egg nog mixed with melted vanilla ice cream, mixed with ground up little angels and unicorns and things that probably taste delicious.  Now, picture the best bread pudding you've ever had, and imagine if it were just sliced from a large sheet of bread that tasted just the same, and that you could eat for breakfast in a socially acceptable context.  Got it?  Okay, let's go further.

How about if you take that awesome custard-soaked french toast, then fill two pieces with a mixture of melted cream cheese and fruit preserves?  That's where the farci, or 'stuffed', part of this comes from.  Ready for breakfast yet?  Good.

The recipe I present is a mash-up from two different sources.  First, some place on the internet which I have long forgotten, for the custard part.  Second, my friend's mom, who served me the best stuffed french toast I had ever tried until I created this Frankenstein version.  Thanks for the inspiration, Robin.

For the record, to create this I ended up stockpiling old bread parts in the fridge until I had enough to make a batch.  This took a few weeks to accumulate, and worked perfectly.  Consider a similar route, if you have the space.

Day Before Custard French Toast (Pain Perdu Farci)
from various sources

• 6-8 slices stale French bread, cut on the diagonal into 3/4-1 inch slices
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 3 tbsp. melted butter
• 3 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup orange marmalade 

Arrange bread in single layer in 9x13 inch pan.  Combine eggs, milk, sugar, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.  Pour over bread.  Turn slices to coat evenly.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, make your filling.  Stir cream cheese and marmalade together in a medium bowl, and set aside.

To cook, melt butter in skillet or on grill.  Remove bread slices from egg mixture.  Saute in heated pan until golden, about 5 minutes on each side.

To plate, place one piece of toast down, then spoon on 1-1.5 tbsp of the filling, then top with another piece.  Dust with powdered sugar, and serve with syrup, more marmalade, or topping of choice.

Pumpkin Bread

Close on the heels of my pumpkin soup recipe, I wanted to use up the rest of my roasted pie pumpkin.  But since I've eaten pumpkin pie about 5 times in the past 2 weeks, and I will have to eat it another half dozen times in the next 2 weeks, I figured I'd try something slightly different - pumpkin bread.  This is a quick bread following the 'muffin method', by which I mean dumping a bunch of dry ingredients into a wet ingredient bowl to form a batter, activating a leavening agent (baking soda) which will help the bread rise in the absence of yeast.

A quick search online found a very popular recipe, which I upgraded by replacing canned pumpkin with actual roasted pumpkin.  I also made a half recipe into a single loaf for what should have made 1.5 loaves, because I like my muffin-breads a bit taller.  I did not exercise my time-tested tip of replacing half of the oil with applesauce like I do for my banana bread, but I know it will work with minimal impact to the flavor.  With that, I give you...

The finished pumpkin bread

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread

Adapted from Allrecipes.com

• 1/2 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree, or 8 ounces roasted pie pumpkin
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (trick: you can substitute half of this for applesauce!)
• 1/3 cup water
• 1-1/2 cups white sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 7x3 inch loaf pan - rub butter all over the inside with a paper towel, then put in about 2 tbsp of flour and rotate it all around by shaking the pan, including up the sides, until it's thoroughly coated.

The greased and floured loaf pan

In the larger of two bowls, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil (or oil/applesauce mix), water and sugar until well blended.  In a separate smaller bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger.  Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended - don't overstir this, or you will get tough, poorly risen bread!  Pour into the prepared pan(s), and shape gently to get the mixture to be roughly flat in the pan.

Roasted pumpkin!  So much better than the canned stuff

Ah, the muffin method - my old friend.  Make sure you have extra room in the liquid bowl, since that's where it all ends up.  Always add the dry to the wet.

Give it a few shakes.  Don't smack it on the table - it didn't do anything to you

Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven.  The loaves are done when a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Be sure you test in the center, because that's where the bread will be the least cooked, and you are liable to end up with a slightly underdone core otherwise.

Here's a final step you should keep in mind - the cooling process.  You want the loaf to cool down enough to shrink away from the edges of the pan, but not so much that it steams itself soggy.  So give the loaf 30 minutes in the pan to cool slightly, then turn it out onto a cooling rack and let it cool the rest of the way.  Mine got a little depressed-looking when I passed out on the couch after removing it from the oven, so you'll have to use your imagination about what the FINAL pumpkin bread actually looks like.  But I assure you, the flavor was spectacular, and the pumpkin taste was festive without being overly pie-like.  Sorry, pie lovers.