Dr Mobeus
Old-Fashioned Fruited Bread Pudding
This is the bread pudding you remember from the school dinner tray: dense, spicy, studded with fruit and cut into thick squares with a sugary top. It is not the creamy bread and butter pudding made with slices in a dish. It is the other one, the working-class classic built to use up a stale loaf at pennies per square.
The whole pudding costs about £1.90 and cuts into 8 generous squares, so it works out at roughly 24p each. Dried fruit, sugar and mixed spice are the only things you might not already have, and value mixed fruit costs about £1.50 for a 500g bag, which covers two batches.
Soaking and squeezing the bread sounds like a faff but it is the step that makes the texture right, so do not skip it. The finished pudding keeps for days in a tin and honestly improves by day two.
Old-Fashioned Fruited Bread Pudding
Ingredients
Method
- Tear the bread into rough pieces and soak in cold water for 15 to 20 minutes until completely soft. This is the traditional first step and it stops the pudding tasting bready.
- Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan) and butter a 20cm square baking tin.
- Squeeze the soaked bread a handful at a time until it stops dripping, then crumble it into a large bowl. It should look like coarse wet breadcrumbs.
- Add the dried fruit, brown sugar, mixed spice, salt, beaten egg, melted butter and milk. Mix thoroughly until everything is combined into a thick, spoonable mixture.
- Press the mixture evenly into the tin and smooth the top with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle the extra sugar over the surface.
- Bake for 45 to 50 minutes until firm to the touch and dark golden on top. It should spring back slightly when pressed.
- Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then cut into 8 squares. Eat warm or completely cold with a splash of custard if you have it.
Tips and Variations
Any stale bread works here, white or wholemeal, including the ends nobody eats. Swap the mixed spice for cinnamon, grate in half an apple or a carrot, or add a handful of chopped dates. If the mixture feels dry before baking, loosen it with a splash more milk. The pudding keeps up to four days in an airtight tin and freezes well whole or in squares.
