Savory Bread Pudding, recipes

I tend to handle my relatively small refrigerator freezer - I forget what I named it, back on an old thread here - by buying fresh, cooking up, and freezing, and, even worse, I tend to save scraps of this and that. So, almost every day, my freezer is a puzzle palace even though I do label with a sharpie, mostly. Yesterday, I decided to clear out all the bread crappola (doesn't rhyme with Coppola), and found a good basic recipe online, which I'll post in a bit.

Of course I riffed on it. Not only riffed but surfed.

I'll post that my notes and results too.
Please don't blame the Epicurious recipe for any mess up on my part, of course. They are only vaguely related, the Epi recipe being inspiration.

The Epicurious recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Savory-Bread-Pudding-with-Mushrooms-and-Parmesan-Cheese-2364

This rich, custard-like stuffing is also a great main-course option for vegetarians at the Thanksgiving table; it would be nice with a salad for brunch or lunch, too.
ingredients
1 (1-pound) loaf crusty country-style white bread
1/4 cup olive oil
4 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
1 large garlic clove, minced
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter
1 pound assorted fresh mushrooms (such as crimini, button, portobello, and stemmed shiitake), thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced celery
1 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
3 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
8 large eggs
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
preparation

Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Cut bottom crust and short ends off bread and discard. Cut remaining bread with crust into 1-inch cubes (about 10 cups loosely packed). Place cubes in very large bowl. Add oil, thyme, and garlic; toss to coat. Spread cubes out on large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake until golden and slightly crunchy, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Return toasted bread cubes to same very large bowl.

Melt butter in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, celery, and bell pepper. sauté until soft and juices have evaporated, about 15 minutes. Add sautéed vegetables and parsley to bread cubes.

Whisk heavy cream, eggs, salt, and ground pepper in large bowl. Mix custard into bread and vegetables. Transfer stuffing to prepared dish. Sprinkle cheese over. DO AHEAD Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake stuffing uncovered until set and top is golden, about 1 hour. Let stand 15 minutes.




Me, I had a lot in the freezer, so not much cooking up, more emptying plastic ricotta cheese containers of vegies (labeled). I never did add cheese, too much lily gilding.
It turned out well, about fifteen minutes ago.

My notes:

thawed
Leftover homemade burger buns, broken into bits, made with oil/ap - bletch, never again
Leftover ricotta pie crusts, cut up, made with oil, ap/ww flour
Leftover sourdough Terni bread bits - C.Field, oil already, ap/ww
Leftover Neapolitan pizza crust bits - C. Field, oil already, some bits of sauce or cheese on them
Leftover Nicky V’s (fabulous) pizza crust bits, presumed oil
These added up to 22 ounces, more than the Epi recipe; the burger buns were “fresh”, the rest already crusty, the crusty bits predominating.

dish
Not knowing how these bread scraps plus other stuff I’m thinking of adding would fill a glass dish, I’m using a bigger one than the recipe - mine is 10” x 16”.

bowl -- on the big side, not gigantic
9 eggs since I’ve more bread than recipe, we’ll see, maybe 10. (9)

Whipped the eggs, added 3.5 cups of half and half (not cream), added the crusties to it, messed them around off and on so the bread took up the moisture.

Started with the thawed items, trying to drain oil - some caramelized onions, some sauteed collards, quite a bit of sauteed mushrooms, some peas and sauteed eggplant and spicy green pepper from one of the containers, some chopped fresh celery, 3 cloves of garlic diced though the vegies already had some garlic, no salt as there was already salt in all that, a round of ground black pepper.

Added a smushed mild ital sausage and a half to the conglomeration.

Tossed into a non buttered glass dish, size above, no oiling or butter, there was enough in the vegies.

Baked at 350 F for 40 minutes, perfect.


Please add your own recipes!