French Toast Bread Pudding and Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Syrup

This is the way we often use up leftover bread heels or day old bread that's gotten too hard or crusty.  Just soak it in the milk/egg mix and bake for a custardy french toast breakfast!

This bread pudding recipe comes from the Barefoot Contessa and we have just modified it a little.  It's more of a custardy bread pudding than french toast.   We also modified the buttermilk syrup recipe we've always used to add vanilla bean and it adds a delicious vanilla flavor to the syrup.  I like to slice up some strawberries to serve with this too. They are good on top drizzled with the syrup. 

Ingredients

• 1 challah loaf, torn into pieces (or any loaf of French bread type bread)
• 8 extra-large eggs
• 5 cups half-and-half or milk
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon grated orange zest
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• Confectioners' sugar and vanilla bean buttermilk syrup, for serving

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Tear bread into large bite-sized chunks in a large bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, half-and-half, honey, orange zest, vanilla, and salt. Pour the mixture over the bread and press the bread down. Allow to soak for 10 minutes if bread is fresh and if bread is crustier or stale, soak an hour or up to overnight.

Pour the bread pudding mixture into a 9x13 casserole dish.  Place the 9x13 baking dish in a larger roasting pan and add enough very hot tap water to the roasting pan to come an inch up the side of the baking dish. Cover the roasting pan tightly with aluminum foil, tenting it so the foil doesn't touch the pudding. Make two slashes in the foil to allow steam to escape. Bake for 45 minutes, remove the aluminum foil, and bake for another 40 to 45 minutes, until the pudding puffs up and the custard is set. Remove from the oven and cool slightly.

With a small sieve, dust lightly with confectioners' sugar and serve hot in squares with vanilla bean buttermilk syrup on the side.

Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Syrup

1/2 c. butter

1/2 c. buttermilk

1 c. sugar

1 Tbsp. corn syrup

1 tsp. baking soda

1 vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla bean paste

In large saucepan, combine butter, buttermilk, sugar, and corn syrup.  Bring to a rolling boil.  Remove from heat and add vanilla beans and baking soda and stir.  It will foam up to about 3 times it's volume so make sure you are using a larger saucepan.  Serve hot over bread pudding.

• If you don't have a vanilla bean on hand, use the vanilla bean paste shown in the photo below.  Krista introduced us to this and we love it!!  It comes from Williams Sonoma and is a great way to get vanilla bean flavor without having to have the beans on hand. 
• We also use powdered buttermilk to make the buttermilk for the syrup if you don't have it on hand.  The powdered stuff works great in our syrup, waffles, and all the baking recipes we've tried it in. (see photo)