Rosies Bread and butter pudding

Usually, once a week a buy bread for the animals called Pain Dur, Hard Bread, Normally I but from the bread shops, I get a bag of stale baguettes and other breads, I grind a couple down for bread crumbs for use in the kitchen, the rest I feed to the chickens, ducks and turkeys. Sometimes I buy from the supermarket, now this can be a mixed load of bread stuffs, occasionally pain au chocolate, croissants and Swiss fruit cakes, the load could include fruit cakes and grain breads as well, the beauty of the supermarket breads is that they are normally in date. Today I bought a bag of bread from Intermarche, nearly all sliced loafs and dated 25th August, today is the 23rd, so I'm making bread puddings, 1 sweet and 1 savoury. I've also put 4 loafs in the freezer for another day, the rest in the animal feed store.

Just because you don't have all the ingredients listed here shouldn't necessarily stop you from cooking this, this recipe calls for sultanas and dates, after it was cooked I realised I had a couple of bananas, I would have liked now to have done banana and date, maybe you could try cooking that. Let me know how it turns out.

Ok, glass of wine in hand, the recipe;

Sliced bread (enough to put 3 layers in your dish.)
Butter for spreading
Seedless dates, chopped
Raisins and sultanas
4 eggs
450ml milk
2 tablespoons sugar
Vanilla essence
Ground hazelnuts.


Butter bread both sides, I keep the crusts on (according to my mother keeps your hair curly), remove stones from dates and chop.

Put a layer of the buttered bread in an oven proof dish, spread the dates over the bread, then put on another layer of bread and put sultanas and raisins on top of this.
Cover with last of the bread.

Beat eggs, sugar and milk together, add vanilla and pour over your pudding, pressing the bread down to help soak up the milk, its important the top layer gets some of the milk, add more milk if necessary. sprinkle with hazelnuts and a little sugar and bake, for about 15 mins till golden brown at 200c.