Elevate Your Next Bread Pudding By Using Sourdough

Bread pudding is a classic dessert. As a cook, there's nothing more satisfying than saving something old, stale, and hard and turning it into something special. As a diner, there are few things as hearty and satisfying as a well-made bread pudding.

According to MasterClass, a traditional bread pudding is made of cubes of day-old bread soaked in a mixture of eggs, dairy, and sugar. Fresh bread almost dissolves into the liquid, while stale bread can hold its shape. As it bakes, the soaked bread on the bottom becomes set into a custard-like consistency, and the bread poking out the top becomes golden brown and crisp. That textural contrast has made bread pudding a traditional dessert and a classic brunch offering.

Like many favorite recipes, humble, thrifty origins have been elevated to new tasty heights. Adding dried fruit, nuts, or chocolate chips is easy for embedded nuggets of contrasting textures and flavors. Finally, bread pudding is often served with a sauce. A basic caramel sauce, berry coulis, or a flavored custard sauce would be perfect.

Tinkering with the main ingredient might be the best way to put your stamp on bread pudding. Whole grain breads don't absorb the pudding base as well as basic white bread, so they're a better choice. White breads enriched with butter and eggs, like challah or brioche, have become the norm.

Pastry chef Paola Velez prefers to use sourdough to provide a tangy complexity to her bread pudding. Her recipe for guava and cheese bread pudding in Food and Wine isn't your average version. First, the pudding base goes all out with butter, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and eggs. Then she makes a caramel sauce. The time is taken to layer in guava paste cubes and cream cheese dollops. Finally, it gets adorned with fresh tropical fruit. She describes it as "if flan and bread pudding had a baby."

If all of that sounds intimidating, focus on the bread choice. Just like sourdough can seriously upgrade your french toast, it'll elevate any bread pudding recipe. King Arthur Baking explains that sourdoughs use a combination of beneficial bacteria and wild yeast to leaven the dough and create a delicate sour flavor. It's a break from using commercial yeast. Making sourdough at home is something of a lifestyle that went viral in 2020, per the Economist. If you're still on the sourdough bandwagon, bread pudding will handle any leftover loaves you have. If not, most bakeries offer their own sourdough.

Whether you buy a loaf from a local bakery or make your own, that hint of sour tang offsets the sweetness of bread pudding in an interesting way. Plus, sourdough's crisp crust and the soft, airy, yet chewy crumb is ideal for soaking up a ton of pudding base while holding its shape.

Sourdough bread pudding might unlock a desire to turn any bread into bread pudding. As MasterClass mentions, rustic, whole-grain breads are hard because they won't absorb the pudding base. But whole grain rye bread pudding can be done if you tinker with the amount of liquid.

Bread pudding doesn't have to use up leftover bread, though. Why not go for something more decadent? With this Food Network recipe, Ina Garten opts for croissants. Spicy Southern Kitchen uses Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but it's safe to say just about any doughnut would suffice. For example, this cake doughnut version from Food Network. What about King's Hawaiian bread pudding? On YouTube, All Things Barbecue utilizes a smoker to bake their bread pudding; they chose crumbled cinnamon rolls for the base.

Remember, bread pudding doesn't have to be sweet. There's an entire world of recipes for savory bread puddings, and sourdough's tang would go perfectly with those, too.