Go Bananas for Pudding!
You don’t have to know any special tricks to make a bread pudding.
It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.  1)  Combine cubes of bread with flavoring ingredients.  2)  Beat together eggs, milk and sugar and pour the custard mixture over the bread cubes.  3) Bake.  That’s it!  You can probably make a successful bread pudding even if you’ve never baked before.

Options
For the base of the bread pudding, it’s okay to use any bread you have on hand or especially like.  Pick your favorite – challah or egg bread, cinnamon-raisin, French, Italian, rye, sourdough, wheat or white bread.  Whole-grain breads, such as whole wheat, contain more fiber than breads made from refined flours, so they’re more nutritious.  Bread pudding is actually a good way to use up older bread that’s starting to go stale.  In the oven, the bread will soak up the egg-milk custard and become soft again.

The recipe here is flavored with peanut butter morsels and bananas, one of America’s favorite fruits.  If you don’t like this combination, though, you could use chocolate or butterscotch morsels in place of the peanut butter morsels or a different fruit instead of the sliced bananas.  Depending on the season, pick fresh, drained canned, dried or candied fruit or fruit preserves.  Almost any fruit will work, except raw pineapple, figs, papaya, kiwi, honeydew and ginger.  These fruits all contain an enzyme that breaks down protein and prevents a custard from setting.  The same enzyme prevents gelatin from gelling.

You could use chocolate milk rather than plain milk or you could choose brown sugar in place of white.  Vanilla often helps to smooth out other flavors and makes chocolate taste more chocolaty, but you might prefer almond, lemon, maple, mint, orange or another flavoring.  Other possibilities for flavoring a bread pudding are cocoa, flaked coconut or spices, such as cinnamon.  You can also use nuts, except for pecans and walnuts which color a custard an odd brownish-purple wherever they touch.

If you like, prepare the pudding mixture, refrigerate it overnight and bake it the next day.  Just add more baking time to allow for the chilling.

Hints
Usually, it’s very important to carefully bake a custard pudding just enough and no more.  That’s because the egg-and-milk mixture is quite delicate.  If the custard is baked at too high a heat or for too long at any heat setting, the liquid will be forced out of the egg protein bonds that set the custard.  This makes the custard ‘weep’, causing liquid to separate from the custard.

A bread pudding is less sensitive than other custards, though, because the bread helps to insulate the custard from direct oven heat.  Plus, if you slightly overbake the custard pudding, the bread will soak up any liquid that is squeezed out of the protein bonds. 

Still, it’s best to time the baking fairly carefully.  Too short a time and the custard won’t set; too long a time and it will curdle.  To test for doneness, insert a knife into the custard near, but not at, the center.  The knife will come out clean – without liquid egg – when the custard is done.

Peanut Butter-Banana Bread Pudding
6 servings

      Cooking spray
   3 cups day-old bread cubes (about 3 slices)
   1 cup (6 oz.) peanut butter morsels
   1 to 1 1/2 cups sliced bananas (about 2 medium, 6 oz.)
   4 eggs
   2 cups skim or low-fat milk
1/3 cup sugar
   1 teaspoon vanilla

Evenly coat 9 x 9-inch baking dish with spray.  In coated dish, toss together bread cubes, morsels and banana slices.  In medium bowl, beat together eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla until well blended.  Pour over bread cube mixture.

Bake in preheated 350°F oven until knife inserted near center comes out clean, about 40 to 45 minutes.  Serve hot, warm or chilled.

For More Baking Fun