Savory Bread Pudding

Savory bread pudding with cheese sauce, mixed green salad, and a slice of crispy bacon.

After a couple of weeks with family visiting we had a lot of ends of cheese, a baguette drying out in the freezer, and nearly 2 dozen eggs just waiting to go bad. Not really a great meal for cholesterol reduction, but yummy and comforting and better than letting all that food go to waste.

INGREDIENTS:

Ingredients for step one.

1 baguette, cut into 1 inch cubes (challah or brioche would work well here, but this was about using up leftovers)

4-5 eggs

1/3 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup milk

4 shallots, sliced and lightly sauteed

Fresh herbs, roughly chopped (I used parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme)

1/3 cup sharp cheddar cheese (gruyere would be nice too)

Butter (to grease the pan and to saute the shallots)

Parmesan Cheese, Ground flax seed, fresh rosemary (for topping).

DIRECTIONS:

Mix the eggs, cream, milk, herbs and grated cheese in a bowl. Saute shallots for about 4 minutes, let cool then add to milk and egg mixture.  Place bread cubes in a larger bowl and pour egg and milk mixture to cover. Stir to coat all of the bread cubes. Butter a casserole dish and place bread into pan, gently press down. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or at least 4 hours). Check to ensure that all of the bread cubes get a good soak (think French toast), if some are too dry you can amend by beating an egg into a bit of milk and adding a couple of hours before baking. I like a topping, so while the oven was preheating to 350f I combined about 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese with 2 teaspoons ground flax seed and chopped rosemary and sprinkled over the top of the bread pudding. Bake, uncovered, for 50-60 minutes. Serve with cheese sauce, mixed greens, and if you like a piece of crisp bacon. Yummy comfort food.

Ready to cover and refrigerate.

Sprinkle topping before putting into a 350 oven for about 50-60 minutes.

Let it rest a bit before serving.