Bread + Butter Pudding (Sourdough + Sugar plums)

I’d like to keep this short and sweet (much like the recipe I am about to post, hurr hurr). The other day, as time makes fools of us all, my kitchen had unexpectedly become the confused home of the dregs of two loaves of stale, rock-hard sourdough, a bottle of milk teetering on the brink of expiration in the fridge and a handful of sugar plums which were now sympathetically over ripening by its side, literally bursting at their seams with sweetness. So in a flurry of food blogger grandeur with help from some butter and eggs, from my oven poured one of the best impromptu desserts ever made – I’m talking repertoire for life with the added bonus of DRF (“dat rustic feel”) grade dessert. As much as I like to think I am the internet’s gift to cooking as each golden spoonful graced my golden mouth hole stroking my golden ego – the spectacle of this pud’ relies 99% on the producers all this good stuff was sourced from. So I’ve included a little list towards the end of this post.

If you’re reading this outside of sugar plum season, either omit or replace it with something else nice. The staler the bread the better – bask in the flecks of vanilla bean in every chewy mouthful. Be one with the just set custard. Get zen with all those things in your fridge which might have been thrown out and wasted otherwise.
 

Bread + Butter Pudding with Sourdough and Sugar Plums
1/2 loaf stale sourdough
300ml milk
300ml cream
4 large eggs
125g sugar
1 generous vanilla bean
Enough butter to slather on your bread pieces
6 sugar plums, or however many you have
Icing sugar, to serve (optional)

1. With a knife, or hacksaw, divide sourdough into pieces. You can arrange them in your dish of choice to check you have enough but keep in mind they will become one with the milk (and shrink) once custard mixture is poured over.
2. Slather that bread with any amount of butter you please iIf you’re not all about that #cleaneating life, be generous) and arrange them in the dish, tetris style.
3. Whisk together milk, cream, eggs, sugar and seeds of vanilla bean. Pour over the stale bread and allow to stand for an hour. You may need to do this in two parts and the bread soaks up the custard mixture. While this is happening, preheat oven to 180° and halve and de-seed the sugar plums.
4. Once bread is drenched and ready, scatter sugar plums on top of the bread, pushing a few a little further into the dish. Place in the oven for 35 minutes. When ready sprinkle with icing sugar and serve immediately.

Bread from Shepherd’s Bakehouse (pumpkin sourdough) and Rosetta Stone (seven seed sourdough)
Butter by Pepe Saya
Sugar plums from The Muscat Family Farm sourced by The Local Harvest Collective
Milk from Country Valley Dairy
Eggs from Holbrook Paddock