Rummy chocolate banana bread pudding

Hi, my name is Sarah.  I'm a Sugar Lovin pastry chef and I dislike bread pudding.  Here's my story.

Until last week, I'd never made bread pudding.  The concept of it sounds a little odd to me.  Bread, soaked in a sugary milk mixture and then baked?  Just weird. I'd had bread pudding-style French toast, but that was...different, in the fact that it was a savory meal, not a sweet treat.

In any case, I decided I'd try it.  I was in desperate need a of a good party dessert and I didn't have a lot of time to make something.  Why I landed on bread pudding, I'll never know.  Maybe I was inspired by an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on bread pudding, or maybe it's been the litany of bread pudding recipes I'd seen lately.  Either way, I was one loaf of crusty Italian bread and half-and-half away from having this recipe all but finished. 


A few things you should know about bread pudding:
1.  It's a very old dessert. 
2.  It can be made quickly or slowly, depending on what you need
3.  It's just as good cold as it is hot
4.  The flavor combinations are endless
5.  There is no "right" kind of bread, however their are breads that really don't work well

Bread pudding is actually a very, very old sweet treat that evolved from people needing to find a use for their stale bread. Ancient Romans, Egyptians, and Indians all refer to a dish that was, in essence, a bread pudding.  A traditional bread pudding today begins with stale bread soaked in an egg custard which is then baked with whatever flavors and fixins you'd like.  The bread pudding of ancient Roman times was not soaked with custard, as custard was not invented until the Middle Ages, but it held the same basic theory- milk, stale bread, fat, and a sweetener of some kind.  It's remained popular throughout the ages and is often thought of as comfort food.  For more on the history of bread pudding, check out this article from ehow.com. 

Bread pudding can be made in just an hour or it could take an overnight soak and a water bath to bake.  It depends on what you need to do.  For an incredibly traditional way to make bread pudding, check out this recipe from Paula Deen.   You could even go so far as to soak the bread cubes overnight.  This particular recipe includes baking the bread pudding in a bain marie, or water bath.  Water baths are a very gentle way to cook something, allowing the entire dish to cook very evenly.  However, with other recipes, you might only have to soak the bread cubes for 10 minutes and bake it, sans the bain marie.

Also, bread pudding tastes really good cold; especially with a cup of coffee in the morning.  I personally think it tastes better hot, but that's just me. 

Bread pudding is likely not going to get "old" either, as long as you keep switching up your flavor combinations.  Try coconut cream from Paula Deen; traditional apples, cinnamon and raisin made with a brioche bread; chocolate and coffee with stale pain de mie; pear and walnut with cinnamon swirl bread; you get the idea.  

Finally some people swear that only certain breads make a good bread pudding.  They'll claim it's brioche or bust.  French loaf or it's gross.  Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada.  Any fresh bread that's gone stale will do.   An oxymoron, I know, but let me elaborate. 

You don't want to use Wonder bread or high preservative sandwich bread.  This bread is less likely to go stale quickly, for one, and for two, it's so thin it wouldn't hold up to the custard soak.  Any fresh, bakery bread, i.e. the stuff you find in the bakery section of your grocery store or a loaf you would actually buy at a bread bakery will work just fine.  This bread is often free of artificial preservatives and will only need a day of sitting out to go stale.   I experimented with the types of bread I used mainly for flavor reasons, but they all worked fine in the recipes. 

So now, on to the main event, my rummy chocolate banana bread pudding.  It's easy, it's quick and it's super delicious. 

Ingredients:
15 cups Bread cubes (I used an Italian loaf for this recipe)
20 oz Mini chocolate chips, divided
3 3/4 cups Half-and-half
1/4 cup Good rum
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Brown sugar
1 Tbsp Vanilla
6 Large eggs

3 VERY ripe bananas
2/3 cup Heavy cream

Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  In a 9x13 baking dish combine bread cubes and 10 oz of chocolate chips.  Spread evenly to the edges. 
2. In a large saucepan over medium high heat, bring half and half and rum to a boil.  Meanwhile, combine sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, eggs and peeled bananas in large bowl.  Whisk to combine, mashing the bananas as necessary.  SLOWLY, pour the hot half-and-half mixture into the egg mixtures, whisking constantly to ensure the eggs don't curdle. 
3.  Pour this liquid custard over the bread cubes and chocolate chips.  Cover with aluminum foil and set in refrigerator to soak for 20 minutes.
4.  Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Meanwhile, set remaining 10 oz of chocolate in stainless steel bowl.  Bring heavy cream to soft boil and pour over chocolate.  Whisk until smooth. 
5.  Allow bread pudding to cool and serve still warm with chocolate sauce.

That's my journey of bread pudding.  Did I mention I'm a total convert now?