Rum Glazed Coconut Bread Pudding Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Why is my bread and butter pudding dry? ›

How do you fix dry bread pudding? If you somehow overcook it and it becomes dry or you're reheating your bread pudding, you can fix it by adding a bread pudding sauce or cream on top. In fact, nothing works better than ice cream to bring it back to life.

Only cover the bread pudding in oven for some of the time

If you take it out too soon, you'll be left with a mushy and wet middle that hasn't been given the time it needs in the oven to set, but with a super crispy top — not ideal, to say the least.

There are two main reasons why bread pudding bakes up mushy. One is that is has not baked long enough for the custard to . The other reason is that the bread was too fresh and did not soak up much custard, so the pudding is more liquidy than it should be.

Bake about 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Another way to judge whether the pudding is fully baked, is to gently press down on the center of the pudding. If any custard comes up to the top, the pudding needs to be baked a little longer.

Bread pudding's magic is how the old, dried bread can be re-invigorated with a mixture of milk, eggs, and sugar that it soaks up like a sponge, but when the eggs aren't properly beaten you have a separation of the beaten yolk from the beaten whites which gives you the scrambled egg look and flavor.

Some bakers will even buy delicious loaves of bread and purposely leave them out to stale. It is most commonly baked in a large deep rimmed baking pan like the kind used for fudgy brownies or sheet cakes. But when it comes to baking, bread pudding should not be left unprotected.

After you have steamed and cooled your pudding, replace the foil with a freshly buttered piece to keep it moist and store in a cool, dark place, or the fridge, until you are ready to reheat it on Christmas day.

Reheating for Best Results

Oven: For those preferring a crisp top, preheating the oven to 350°F and placing the bread pudding in a baking dish with some water at the bottom can recreate the original baking environment. Cover with foil and heat until warm, approximately 20 minutes.

Pudding is usually runny because it has been stored in the refrigerator for too long or in an open space. Another cause could be due to improper cooking methods.

Too much flour makes dough too stiff to rise properly, creating a dry texture. A range of flour is always given in yeast bread recipes because flours vary in moisture content, reacting in different ways depending on the time of year, weather conditions, etc.