Panettone pudding

Bread and butter pudding.  Such a humble beginning, the original version is usually made with stale bread*, milk, eggs, a handful of dried fruit, demerara sugar and a sprinkling of spice on top.  I like to use enriched breads such as leftover panettone, stale croissants, brioche, challah, past the best before hot cross buns.  All these work very well.  I had a whole Panettone from Christmas because we didn’t get round to eat it – there were so much food for two in our home!! Anyway, what a lovely base to make this comforting pudding.

400g enriched bread (I used panettone)
2 eggs and 1 egg yolk
300ml semi skimmed milk
300ml single cream
1 teaspoon butter
30g caster sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Handful of demerara sugar
Nutmeg or ground cinnamon

• Get a gratin dish ready.  Mine is a ceramic oval shaped one.  Make sure it can fit all the overlapping pieces of bread and is deep enough to contain the custard mixture.  Grease the dish with butter.  Preheat the oven to 160c.  Get ready a roasting tin that’s large enough to accommodate the gratin dish and hot water to come up half way of this tin.
• Slice the bread, and place them in the gratin dish overlapping with the crust uppermost.  
• In a jug, put the eggs, yolk, cream, milk, vanilla and whisk them together.  Add the caster sugar, start with 1 tablespoon, taste and adjust if you need more.  You may want more than 2 tablespoons.
• Sieve in the custard mixture over the bread to give an even result.  Lightly push the bread down, the bread does not need to be fully submerged but best if they have absorbed some of the mixture.
• Grate over some fresh nutmeg (or use ground cinnamon if you prefer).  Evenly sprinkle on the demerara sugar to give a nice crust.
• Put this dish into the roasting tin then fill it with hot water from the tap to half way.  This is called a water bath or bain marie.  Carefully transfer the whole thing into the preheated oven.  In my oven, it took 45 minutes to cook, yours might differ.  The result should be a crusty crunchy top with a set but wobbly custard.  Remove it from the water bath to cool a bit.  I like it just as it is, without any further adornment, eaten warm.

* I probably would draw the line on the seeded brown bread.  You want the unadulterated softness of the bread, rich and delicious, basked in the soft wobble of custard.  Somehow seeds, delicious as they are, become an unwelcome distraction of this comforting pudding.

Optional: you can flavour the custard in any way you like.  In place of vanilla, use Amaretto, or other sweet liqueur like Grand Marnier.  You can also omit the cream and use 600ml milk instead.