Will It Be Sous Vide? Breakfast Buffet With Bread Pudding
Hello my sous vide friends and welcome back to the warm and cozyWill It Sous Vide? , a weekly column where I do whatever you want with my immersion circulator.
Bread pudding has received a lot of love, and many of it starts out during our theme picking session when Karl offers us a lot of options to play with:
There are actually quite a few sous vide bread pudding recipes out there, but to be honest, I’ve never had a problem making bread pudding in the oven. Aside from the humid cooking environment and the use of tough cans, I wasn’t entirely sure what the sous-vide bread pudding would be.
Then it dawned on me: customization. Since this will all be prepared in cans for one serving anyway, there is no reason why we should not benefit from the personalized nature of the presentation.
Karl had already proven that bread pudding was the perfect blank canvas to paint your warm, soothing carbon masterpiece on, so it was just a matter of assembling.
Rather than coming up with the exact recipe for one type of sous vide pudding, I wanted to come up with a pick-your-own-adventure loose buffet where people could choose from everything from bread to toppings and side foods. (like vanilla or IDK BOOZE?). Then people could put all their favorite foods in the jar and all the special creations made from snowflakes could be harmoniously combined with them. This is obviously perfect for breakfast in the shower, brunch parties, or perhaps a little thing known as “fucking Christmas morning.”
To make your own pudding buffet breakfast, you will need:
- Bread: Yeah. I took a baguette and a loaf of challah, but croissants, sourdough, plain sandwich bread, or even day baked goods are all good options. (Also pizza. Remember the days of pizza and bread pudding ?) Break it up into bite-sized pieces and toast it (although you don’t have to if you want harder pieces of bread).
- Custard: A versatile base of 1 cup whole milk + 1 cup cream + 1 whole egg + 2 yolks is a good starting point, but I added a quarter cup maple syrup to boost the pleasure factor. (In my humble opinion, maple goes well with sweet and savory flavors.)
- Savory bits: breakfast sausage, crushed bacon, lobster meat, crabs, cheeses of all kinds, fried leeks, fried mushrooms, pancetta, prosciutto, fried broccolini, diced and fried potatoes, ham, fried butternut squash, etc.
- Sweets: Dried fruits like cranberries or apricots, toasted nuts, chocolate chips, mini candies, caramel, brown sugar, even more maple syrup, vanilla, candied ginger.
- Spices and condiments: Cinnamon, graham masala, all spices, ground cloves, powdered ginger, sumac, tea spices, mustard, hot sauces, just fill in your spice cabinet and the seasoning section in the refrigerator and put it all out.
- Alcohol: rum, bourbon, rye, SWEET DRINKS like Kahlua,Bailey’s , Frangelico, fruit schnapps, etc. This is, however, a case where I would not recommend gin. ( The only one .)
- Jars: With tight-fitting lids.
These are by no means complete lists, and I’m sure you can think of some very creative additions. My point is that you are only limited by your imagination or perhaps food allergies. Once you have a good spread, it’s time to start assembling. Given the fact that few people tend to measure everything accurately, especially before coffee, I appreciated the whole process using different jars, bread mixes, and different amounts of custard.
First, I laid out all of my dry ingredients, alternating bread with all kinds of fillings. I then added the custard until it had risen a quarter to the middle of the jar. Finally, I added any other spices or seasonings – use a pinch of good for powders like cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon of liquids like vanilla – closed the jar and vortexed to mix and match.
As mentioned above, there are an almost infinite number of combinations you can make here, but I chose the following:
- Breakfast sausage + sautéed leeks + blue cheese
- Rum (1/4 oz) + vanilla (1/4 teaspoon) + pecans
- Pecans + sausage for breakfast + blue cheese
- Leek saute + cheddar
The joyous jugs were then thrown into a rotating water bath set at 170 ℉, where they remained for two full hours.
When their hot bath time was over, I removed the lids and set fire to the tops of some of them. I was not happy with the result.
The remaining cans were sent to the oven under the brazier to see if the lid came out less charred.
I was much happier with baked babies.
Then the time has come for the truth. Time to take a bite and then answer our favorite question of all.
Will there be sous vide bread pudding?
Answer: Um. Yes. Very, very much . In fact, I’m going back to what I said about “really don’t see much benefit in this cooking method in this case,” because it was some kind of super-pressed bread pudding. It was moist, sweet, and every bite was saturated with the scent of all the other ingredients.
Also, it was a very gentle cooking method, each can was delicious, although I never measured anything for sure (other than booze and vanilla). Sure, the jars I poured less liquid in were a little drier, but some like it, and cooking and serving them this way allows everyone to customize their bread pudding, allowing them to achieve the exact consistency and flavor they desire.
I found my solution for Christmas morning breakfast, that’s what I’m talking about. That means Anova will fly to Mississippi, but he flew anyway, my grandma wants to try sous vide cornbread dressing .