Mary Ellen’s Pioneer Bread Pudding

Pioneer Bread Pudding

Ingredients:

4 slices good quality white bread (I like Arnold Country  White or something similar)

2 cups whole or 2% milk

3 T butter

1/4 cup sugar

2 extra large eggs

Dash salt (If you use unsalted butter, add a little extra salt  – about 1/4 tsp instead of a dash)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Nutmeg

Golden raisins (You can use regular if you don’t have golden, but it looks nicer with the golden raisins.)

Very lightly toast bread. Let cool and then cut into small cubes (about 1 inch in size).

Butter a round French Corningware 1 1/2 quart casserole dish or something similar in size. Put bread cubes in dish.

Put two cups of milk, 3 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup sugar in saucepan.

On medium heat, scald milk w/butter and sugar. This means that you bring it almost to a boil, but not quite and then you take it off and let it cool. Make sure you stir the sugar into the milk so that it’s dissolved and stir a little while the milk is heating because you don’t want the sugar to sit on the bottom and burn!

While milk is heating, boil a kettle of water.

Beat two eggs slightly with salt and vanilla in mixing bowl.

Take your scalded milk which has now cooled off a little and SLOWLY add milk, a little at a time, to the eggs. Whisk while you are doing this because you don’t want to cook the eggs.

Pour this mixture over the bread cubes and add a scant handful of golden raisins. Push them down a little and then sprinkle a little nutmeg over the top. Don’t use too much because nutmeg can be overpowering. Just a light dusting over the whole top. Freshly grated is always best!

Place Corningware dish in a large rectangular or square baking dish. A metal lasagna pan works great. Pour the boiling water in the pan around the Corningware dish until it’s a couple inches deep.

Carefully place this into a 350 degree oven and bake for one hour. When you take pudding out of the oven, make sure you don’t leave it sitting in the hot water bath because it will continue to cook.

Can be served warm or cold, but it’s yummiest when served warm with fresh whipped cream!