Bread pudding a tasty tribute to odds and ends

When the grocery budget seems to buy less and less all the time, I try to remember all the tricks my mother and grandmother would have used to feed their large families. “Waste not, want not” was my parents’ motto and it’s a good thing to teach a child, even now.

In the kitchen, cooks operating on that principle have invented some of the most delicious foods: French toast, panzanella, terrines and pates, trifle, even something as basic as chicken salad. They’re all designed to use bits and pieces of something stale or leftover from a previous meal.

One of my family’s favorites in this category of food is bread pudding: bread baked with butter, milk, cinnamon and eggs. Think of it as French toast casserole.

If you keep a plastic bag in your freezer and always put leftover stale bread in it, you’ll always have something to feed to the ducks at the park.

But in no time at all you’ll also have enough to make a 9-by-13-inch pan of warm, creamy and comforting bread pudding that can be served for breakfast, a snack or dessert.

Some recipes for bread pudding call for entire slices of bread to be buttered and arranged in the baking dish, but if you have different kinds of bread and lots of heels, as I often do, you might try having your child break the pieces into smaller chunks to mix up, so that each piece of pudding has more than one kind of bread in it.

And there’s no need to butter each piece – just have your child use a dull knife to cut up the butter into little pieces and drop them on top of the mixture before it goes into the oven.

Most bread pudding recipes call for sugar, but it’s perfectly delicious without, since the milk contains plenty of natural sugar. It’s easy to sprinkle some brown sugar on top when it’s served, if a little more sweetness is necessary.

Below is a delicious, basic recipe for bread pudding. It’s best served warm, either plain or with some cream. If you make it the day before you can just reheat it in the microwave and serve with maple syrup for a quick hot breakfast.

Once your child has learned basic bread pudding, see if they want to try some variations like these: adding raisins, banana slices, dried cranberries or diced dried apples; substituting maple flavoring or nutmeg for the vanilla; making a savory version with bits of pre-cooked sausage or bacon, grated cheese and sage; or adding some chocolate pieces along with the butter for an extra special dessert version.

Bread Pudding

Makes one 9-by-13 baking dish full

9 cups soft bread, torn into pieces (use more or less as desired)

4 cups milk

4 eggs

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 tablespoons butter

Grease a 9 x 13 baking dish. Put bread into baking dish. In a separate bowl, combine milk, eggs, cinnamon and vanilla. Pour milk mixture over the bread. Press bread down into the liquid to make sure all the bread is moistened. Cut the butter into little pieces and dot over the top of the bread.

Bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes or until browned and gently set. Serve warm.