I'm not much of a recipe writer-downer. i like to take little notes about whatever i'm currently going to cook or bake and write them down on scraps of paper. if the food turns out good, it means i put the scrap of paper somewhere in the kitchen, usually on the fridge - YAY! it also means that i have about 45 scraps of paper which all have some sort of variation on X cups of sugar, X tbsp butter, X cups of milk, splash vanilla, bake at 350 for 35 min. So I rarely know if my recipe is for cookies or cupcakes or whatever. Which is why, in order to keep this recipe special and out of the "scrap o paper pile" - i wrote it on a netflix return envelope. I love this recipe. It was handed down from my great grandmother and has been a favorite of mine for my whoooole life! But apparently my great grandmother was like me, and didnt put any sort of descriptions on her recipes because here is the entirety of her notes:
4 cups milk
2 cups old bread
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
3 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 sq unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
Make custard. Pour over bread.
I mean, did everyone in the 30's just KNOW how to make custard? cause i have no idea. all the joy of cooking says is "it is imperative to not overcook the custard or you will obtain an undesirable texture". good grief, way to be super unspecific. so i did some research on the intertubes and sort of wung it (past tense of wing it, winged it? i like wung it) and the rest is history. i tend to make this about once a month, or whenever matt and i have enough leftover crusts of french bread to make this delightful and delicious dessert.
so you make the custard. this involves pouring milk (although i like to use light or heavy cream. it's more tasty. and keeps the fat on that keeps me warm during these cold NJ-stormed nights!) into a sauce pan on med-low or low heat, add the butter and the sugar and the eggs. whisk so that the eggs are incorporated into the milk, and keep whisking as the butter melts, about once a minute or so. in the mean time, chop up the chocolate.
I like to use Bakers chocolate because it's the perfect size squares and is pretty cheap and pretty good quality. also, because it harkens back to my g-gramma's time so you know that it's time-tested YUM
So while your chopping in between your whisking, the butter will melt all up into that deliciousness and then you're ready to throw in the chocolate. the point is to keep whisking as the chocolate melts and as the milk and eggs slightly cook so that it gets thick. so you can either start with warm milk and eggs and butter, or all of them cold and heat them up at the same time (the lazy way). once you've chopped the chocolate, its time to start chopping bread!
chop chop chop
fill up a casserole dish with chop chop. throw in all the crumbs!
the custard should look like this and be kind of thick. if it's not thickened, dont worry, keep going. just make sure that all of the chocolate is incorporated into the mixture (not stuck to the bottom of the pan or unmelted or whatever)
pour pour pour
see how it didnt get on all the breads? get to smushing the bread into the custard. smush smush smush
bake bake bake. about 350 for something like 45 minutes or so. put on a lower rack or else the top breadies will get a bit toasted and you'll have to pick them off later (unless someone in the house likes burned chocolatey bread! it's pretty tasty, acutally. leave em on. dont pick em off)
All done. Pay no attention to the dirty oven.
Eat with a ton of whipped cream. fucking YUM.
yum yum yum
