Recipe for Maple Bread Pudding

I absolutely adore bread pudding.  It is perfect for those dismal, dark, and dank winter days, when you need something joyful and rich to carry you through to spring.

My recipe is nowhere near as sweet as usual bread pudding.  If you use good ingredients, you don't need to hide them with an excess of sugar.  Farm fresh eggs from happy hens have a rich orange yolk which impart a gorgeous golden colour to the pudding and an intensely rich custardy quality.  Sure you can use store bought eggs if nothing else is available, but if you do, add a pinch of saffron to the milk when you heat it as it helps to impart a golden colour.

Another key ingredient is to have really good white bread.  You can use fresh bread, but I think it tastes better with stale.  Those fancy buns that are left over from last nights holiday dinner make an awesome pudd.  I keep some of this on hand all holiday season for those unexpected guest that always drop in around meal time (do other people have this problem, or is it just me?) or for those mornings when I have too much to do to make a proper breakfast.

Maple Bread Pudding

4 cups of good white bread, cut into cubes or torn into 1/2 inch bits
2 cups whole milk (I use goat milk)
3 really nice eggs
1 tsp (goat) butter
about a handful of currents, raisins, or other dried or candied fruit
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
optional, pinch saffron

• Chop or tear the bread so that the bits are about 1/2 inch cube.  Don't fret too much if they are bigger or smaller.  It really doesn't matter if they are all the same size.
• Bring the milk to just below the boil (where it starts to bubble but not fully boiling), stirring frequently to avoid burning.  Remove from heat.  At this time if you are using saffron, add a pinch of it to the milk and stir well.
• Add bread to hot milk, stir in well, and leave until cool.  At least an hour.
• Add the remaining ingredients and stir in well.

If you have a pudding basin

A pudding basin has a lip around the edge that makes tying the cloth over the top possible.  It's also strong enough to plunge into boiling hot water without shattering or cracking.  Mason and Cash really do make the best pudding basins, some shops sell the boring white ones (my favourite) for quite reasonable price.  I think my small ones were about $9 and my larger ones were about $16 to $24.  The Lovely Blue Mason & Cash Pudding Basin makes a wonderful gift for people who love their kitchen.

There are some glass bowls with the appropriate lip around the outside.  You can use these, but please do not plunge them into boiling water like most steamed and boiled pudding recipes call for.  Trust me, this ends badly.  Instead, add them to tepid water and then bring to the boil.  Start your timer when the water is good and bubbly.

• Butter the inside of the pan.
• Spoon your pudding into the basin.  Cover with a cloth and tie down tightly with a string so that the string is just below the rim of the bowl and the cloth is tight.
• Tie the opposite corners of the cloth on top of the pudding with a secure knot.

• Get out your largest pan.  It needs to be big enough to fit the pudding with the lid on.
• If you have a trivet, place it in the bottom of a very large pan. Else put another cloth on the bottom.  You don't really want your basin touching the bottom of the pan directly
• Putting the pudding in the pot and fill with water so that it just about reaches the top of the pudding bowl.  It will get in the pudding as it cooks, but don't worry.
• Bring to boil and boil vigorously for 1 hour.  Remove from water, unwrap and serve hot or cold.

If you are making this in a cloth

• Fetch your largest pan and fill just over half full with water.  Bring to a boil.
• Get a piece of string ready, about 2' is usually ample.
• Rub butter on the inside of the cloth and lightly sprinkle some flour.  Poor the pudding onto the cloth and quickly gather up the edges of the cloth.  Tie a string close to the pudding.
• Drop, gently, the pudding into the boiling water.  Boil vigorously for 1 hour.
• Remove from pan and serve hot or cold.

Please use a clean, cotton or linen cloth. Do not use a synthetic fabric as it may melt.  Also do not use a cloth with a strong colour as it might run and make your pudding look bright purple (how do I know?  don't ask).

This is not a vegan friendly food, but I'll bet dimes to dollars that Sarah Kramer has an awesome vegan version of this, or will do soon.

People with allergies: This has some common allergens in it, eggs being one of them.  Also, many commercially made breads contain soy and other common allergens as fillers.  Raisins and spices sometimes contain soy as an anti-caking agency.  Check the ingredients list on your ingredients (no, really!  It's important).  If you are serving this somewhere where people might have allergies, please include the ingredients for the bread as well as what you used to make the pud..  

You can serve with warm jam or even better, maple syrup for an extra special treat.

ps.  This makes an awesome breakfast cold.  

Simple and Easy - tips for making good bread

I think I can safely say that I make good bread.

I know this because people tell me I make good bread.  Apparently it's a gift, or special power, or I'm amazingly skilled.  I don't agree.  It seems like nothing special to me.

People tell me I make amazing bread, then complain that no matter what they do, they can't seem to bake that perfect loaf.  

Please don't tell them, but I laugh inside, when they describe in great detail all the many things they do to make bread.  I know people who have a collection of over a dozen sourdough starters in their fridge.  People who carefully weigh the flour, measure every ingredient perfectly  use dough conditioners, bread stones, monitor temperature and humidity at every stage... the list goes on.  It really is too much.

I mean it.  All that stuff, really is too much!

By raising the shelf up a notch, you can make a really crispy crust.

I have a very different approach to bread baking.  I think of bread as being a living companion.   I imagine our ancestors were like me, far too busy with other tasks to spend 2 hours fussing over bread.  Sure, bread stones, humidity control, &c. a very good for certain things, but living things don't flourish under strictly controlled conditions.  And bread, whether you like it or not, is a living thing.

One of the reasons why I make sourdough so often, rather than breads from commercial yeasts, is that it takes less time.  Correction, it takes less of my time.  It actually takes way longer than modern methods of baking, but it is so much more forgiving.  If a friend unexpectedly needs my help, I can leave the bread to rise a few extra hours before needing to come back to it.  Whereas a bread made with modern yeast, really only has a 20 hour window of perfection where you absolutely need to take the next step or suffer the consequences.  Of course I don't mind using commercial yeast when it suits my purpose, I just need to be more attentive.

What I'm saying here is that bread is a living thing.  More than that, it's a social creature.  I don't think it likes being cooped up in an oven to rise with nothing but a bowl of water for company.  Have you any idea how boring a bowl of water is?  For me it rises better on the counter, in the middle of the activity.  It loves music, access to fresh air (no drafts), and happy talking.  It hates being alone, angry voices, and the cold shoulder.

So here are some of my thoughts, tips and tricks about how to bake a good loaf of bread.  Most of these are for sourdough but can be applied to other bread methods as well.

• Stick to one, or at most two, starters.  
• If you have so many starters that you can't use every single one every 10 day cycle, then the starters are not going to flourish   A starter can be left alone for weeks or months on end, but it gets wan and doesn't give the same flavour or rise to the bread as a starter that is used frequently.  
• Don't force the bread to your timetable.
• All breads get moody.  They have days when, no matter how perfect the environment, they just won't rise quickly and other days when they pop up like weeds.  There are a few things that you can do to influence this (warmer environment means faster rise, generally) but on the whole, it's up to the bread to decide how it feels.
• I've had some sourdough breads be ready to bake in under two hours, and others take 24 hours before they are ready to go in the oven.  
• A slower rise will impart a stronger flavour to the bread and supposedly makes it easier to digest.
• Don't bother with the damp towel thing
• The damp towel is suppose to keep the bread from drying out while it rises.  If the outside dries out, it will limit the amount the bread can rise at that stage.  There are other ways to stop this.
• Instead, you can coat the inside of the bowl and outside of the bread with olive oil or even melted butter.  Choose an oil with a nice flavour that won't go off when cooked at a high temp. Don't use Canola, Margarine, or nut oil.  If you use sesame oil, mix it with olive oil to keep it from going rancid in the oven.  Cover with a dry towel.
• Why not the damp towel thing?  Warmth makes the bread rise faster, cold retards the rising. When moisture evaporates, it cools things down around it.  Covering with a damp towel is an old method to keep things cool in warm weather.   
• Leave your dough out on the counter, don't hide it away in an oven.
• I feel there are two reasons for this - and this is just my observation.
• One, bread dough likes you.  You made it what it is, after all.  It wants to be near activity.  So if you can bake or cook some other stuff while your bread is rising, then it just rises better.
• Two, bread seems to do better where there is fresh airflow (but not in a draft).  Putting plastic wrap on it, or placing it in a little box, seems to make bread rise differently and not have as nice a finished texture.
• Keep the bread away from the draft.
• where you put the bread in the oven effects how it cooks
• so the higher the shelf in the oven, the crispier the upper crust.  Put it too low, the bottom cooks too quickly (which can be of advantage if you are doing medieval feasts and need a traditional plate (dry lower crust)).  
• PREHEAT your oven.
• Preheat your oven before putting the bread in
• Preheat the oven - get the point yet?
• Score the top of your loaf before baking
• If you want a crispy almost flaky, crust, leave the bread to cool in the air before bagging it.
• If you want a slightly softer crust, wrap the bread in a cotton or linen towel when it's fresh out of the oven.
• NEVER bag your bread while it's still warm.  If it's late at night and you want to go to bed but don't want the bread to dry out completely over night, then wrap it in a cotton or linen towel until it cools.  Then, once it's completely cool, you can put it in plastic, if you have to.
• Feel free to add the flour to the moisture rather than the other way around.
• I don't know why, but just about every bread recipe I've ever seen has you measuring out the dry ingredients, then adding water to them.
• Perhaps people started writing recipes like this because when you are selling bread, it use to be sold by finished weight, so you needed to know how much flour you were using for the loaf.  It's not necessary in home baking.
• I do things the other way.  I put all the moist ingredients in the bowl, add a bit of flour, add some salt and other dry ingredients, mix really well, then add more flour, a bit at a time, until the consistency is right.  

Talk about loaves and fishes eh?
Almost Pastafarian, but would you believe it was suppose to look like wheat?
FSM has made his will known in my bread.

A few tips and tricks.  Feel free to break any of them when/if the mood strikes you, or not.  Bread has been around long enough that I'm sure it won't mind.

Hoto Noodles with loads of yummy, yummy veg

As we quickly move toward the shortest day of the year, it seemed like a good idea to make a bright and cheerful udon soup hotpot.  What I love best about this are the colourful veg - actually, that's not true, what I like best is the taste and the texture.

To make the dashi (stock)

A couple of inches of Kombu (kelp) seaweed
2 Tbs dry mini anchovies (see end of recipe for how to make this vegan friendly)

• place them in cold water and let soak for half an hour
• slowly bring to the simmer (not boil as this can change the flavour of the soup) and simmer for about 5 min
• Remove the kombu from the stock and slice really thin, use as a veg for the noodle soup.  I like to leave the fish in the soup as I think it gives a nice flavour and added calcium 

To make the noodle soup

1 section of dry udon noodle

4 plants of komatsuna

2 green onions

1/2 a carrot

1/2 inch of daikon raddish

a bit of squash

some little flowers that they put in japanese soup sometimes

1 Tbs Red Bean Miso (soy free) paste

• Place the carrots and radish in the dashi and simmer for about 5 min.  
• Add the squash and noodles, simmer for 4 min
• Add the rest of the veg, and simmer for a couple of minutes
• Take a bit of the dashi stock and mix it in a bowl with the soy free miso paste, then add to the hot pot
• Serve piping hot.

This could easily be made vegan friendly by using a kombu only dashi stock.


This recipe was inspired by the Cooking With Dog video, Hoto Noodles.  The video has all sorts of extra goodies like mushrooms and napa cabbage.  I just made mine with what ingredients I had on hand and some komatsuna I found at the local Japanese food store.

Cook Book Review - Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz

Wild Fermentation is full of delicious recipes and is now part of my core collection of cook books.  I give it a solid 8 out of 10.  There is excellent cometary about nutrition and tradition surrounding fermented foods, including the difference between yeast fermentation (like natural sodas and alcoholic), lacto fermentation, and other live culture foods like vinegar.  The recipes included in the book are very casual and many of them work very well without any additional thinking on the part of the cook.

I tried a few recipes from this book including sauerkraut, kim chi, and am almost finished brewing my very first beer, Bouza, or Ancient Egyptian beer.  Other recipes in the book, like hard cider (what we call cider in these parts), sourdough, and Nuka pickles are pretty close to what I already have brewing in my kitchen - only mine seem to be in larger batches ;)

Most of the recipes in this book have been adapted for ingredients common to North America.  So for example, the Nuka pickle paste is made with wheat bran instead of rice bran.


Here are some of the goodies I made from this book.

Sauerkraut

 I think this might be the single most delicious cabbage in the world!

Home made sauerkraut is AMAZING!

And so simple.

Before now, I was always sad about sauerkraut.  I wanted to like it, in fact I really liked the after taste, but I had to get through the start taste to enjoy it.  Usually I go through these fits, usually in the fall, where my body wants to eat it, so I buy jars and jars of it, but can never really find a good way to consume it.  Commercial sauerkraut is so soggy and, for lack of a better word, wimpish.

Homemade sauerkraut not so.  It's crunchy, it's delightfully salty, it's fresh.  I can't even tell you properly how good it is!  But I can tell you, this is not at all like the commercial stuff.

Homemade Kim Chi

I took the ingredients in the kim chi recipe and made it the same way as the sauerkraut.  I liked this recipe because the ingredients list was very casual.  I didn't have onions or green onions in the house, but I did have some baby leeks in the garden.  Garlic, well, I used two buds.  I also didn't have the recommended cabbage, but my favourite Kim Chi is made from Su choy cabbage anyway.  I also added some baby dried anchovies for flavour and nutrition.  If we can add fish sauce and (in other recipes) dried shrimp, why not anchovies?  (note, leave the fish and fish sauce out if you are serving this to Vegans)

As for how it turned out... well, it doesn't taste like any Kim Chi I've ever eaten.  I have a Korean friend who makes traditional Kim Chi for most of the restaurants in town as well as a few shops.  She says that ginger is almost never added to kim chi and if it is added, maybe 1/4 a tsp per cabbage is excessive.  The recipe in this book called for 3Tbs.

But you know what, it still tastes great.  Maybe not what I'm use to, but as far as pickled veg go, I'm more than willing to eat this on a daily basis, and maybe try my hand at making some more again soon.


A few of the recipes are not as good.  Some of the instructions don't make sense.  For example, for the beer recipe I mentioned above, we make a loaf of bread and are suppose to cook the outside but leave the inside raw.  But the temperature and time given for the cooking are in no way adequate.  I'll talk more about this recipe in another post, when it's drinking time.


Because of the casual approach to method and ingredients, this isn't a good book for those who are timid in the kitchen.   I know a lot of people who can cook wonderful meals so long as they have a good recipe to follow.  But ask them to substitute an ingredient or give them a recipe that is vague about stirring or whisking the eggs, and they are lost beyond redemption.  This book is not for those people.


Vegan friendly:  Yes!  I would say most if not all recipes are vegan friendly or can be easily adapted for vegan requirements.

Allergy friendly: Depends on your allergy.  If you have a strong yeast allergy then stay away from the breads, sodas, and alcohol.  I would love to see the miso section include recipes or tips for making miso with beans other than soy.  On the whole, most recipes can be modified to accommodate allergies.  There are even some low-salt options for several of the recipes - like making sauerkraut in wine instead of salt.


Like I said earlier this is now par of my core collection of cook books.  I've enjoyed making, and especially eating, recipes from this book.  I've even taken to eating sauerkraut for breakfast.  But given the small adjustments that some recipes require and that sometimes the recipes are a bit too vague, I can only give it 8 out of 10.

Recipe for chestnut sweet potato rice cooked in a Korean stone pot (dolsot)

Rice cooked in a Dolsot has a really magic taste to it that you can't get any other way.  It is also surprisingly easy to make.

Chestnut and Sweet Potato Rice

1 cup rice (Japanese or American cup, it doesn't matter, just choose one and stick with it)
1 small sweet potato
400g chestnuts, roasted
1tsp soy-sub or soy sauce
1Tbs sake
dash salt
optional - small bit of kombu
Sesame oil for the Dolsot

• oil the dolsot with the sesame oil.  This is an important step to maintaining your stone pot.
• Wash the rice really well.  Add water to the rice.  You can use the measurements on the rice package, or you can use an electric rice cooker to measure out how much water, then put the rice and water together into the stone pot, or you can put the rice in the stone pot and make it so the water is about 1/8 to 3/16th of an inch above the rice.
• Chop the sweet potato, add to the rice
• Shell if necessary, and loosely crumble the chestnuts.
• Add the soy-sub, sake, kombu and salt.  Mix together well.
• Cook on medium low heat for about 45 min or until rice is done.  Feel free to check and stir the rice after half an hour.

After you have scoped the rice out of the bowl ad boiling hot water, green onions, and miso paste to the pot for a healthy soup.

Clockwise from top left: carrot & gobo kimpira, kimchi,
miso paste and green beans for making the soup

This is vegan friendly.