Pretty sandwiches made from store-bought white bread often do not include the crust. The pristine, white exterior of the sandwich would otherwise be marred by the rough, brown edge that the crust would introduce. And so off they go, before all the good stuff gets sandwiched between the white parts.
But then what do you do with the crusts? I suppose you could process them into bread crumbs, but if you don’t really coat things with bread crumbs, what’s a boy to do? Well, like with other leftover bread, you can make bread pudding! I adapted a standard bread pudding recipe, only using bread crusts instead of entire slices. No story this time. It’s a short month. I’m sticking to that excuse.
Bread Crust Bread Pudding
Crusts from a loaf of bread
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup raisins
4 large eggs
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Place the bread crusts in an 8×8 baking dish.
- Drizzle the melted butter over the bread crusts.
- Sprinkle the raisins over the bread crusts.
- Whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla until well-mixed.
- Push down the bread crusts until they are submerged.
- Bake for 45 minutes, until the top springs back when pressed.
I seem to have had a mixture of white and wheat bread. Here are the crusts, with melted butter and raisins.
With the egg and milk mixture poured on top, and the bread pressed down into the mixture.
After 45 minutes in the oven, it’s done. It puffs up quite a bit.
As it cools, it shrinks down.
My bread-to-liquid ratio may have been too high. It basically tasted like cinnamon bread, which isn’t a bad thing.