I abhor and abjure cloyingly sweet desserts. Let's just get that out right now.
This bread pudding is evocative, economical, satisfying and subtly sweet. When I
eat this bread pudding am 8 years old.
My father died when I was eight. The private school where he worked as a mechanic and bus driver and where my sister and I attended kicked into gear the week after he died. Thanksgiving morning my mother and my sister and I woke up to find a box full of food on our doorstep -- the principal of our school, Mr. Paytee, had delivered it. They looked after us and made sure we had food. In the months that followed, the director of the cafeteria, Mrs. Taylor, or as the students called her, Mama T, would send over boxes filled with canned foods, cheeses and dried sliced bread.
Pragmatic survivor that she was, my mother would roll her sleeves up and enlist my help to break the bread into small, semi-uniform pieces. Overnight she would soak the bread with milk right in the baking pan. The next morning she would sprinkle baking powder over the crumbs, beat eggs with sugar and vanilla and mix that in along with some raisins and melted butter. The final touch was a dusting of cinnamon powder. In the oven for an hour. Along with other nutritious food my mother made, we would snack on this for a week.
8 cups Dried bread cubes6 cups Raw milk (take a walk on the wild side...)
4 Eggs
2 Yolks (no, really!!)
1 cup Sugar
2 tsp. Baking powder
Pinch salt
1 Tb. Vanilla extract
1 tsp. Cinnamon
4 oz. Butter, melted
1 cup Raisins
Bake in a 350˚ oven for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Serve warm and drizzle with heavy cream.
