Apple Apple Bread Pudding

For this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Liz of Cake or Death? chose Dorie's Apple Apple Bread Pudding. This is another of those recipes I never stopped on in the cookbook because there is no photo and I'm not a bread pudding fan.

Wait a minute...when we made Dorie's Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding it was one of our all time favorite desserts. We loved, loved, loved it. And this one starts with brioche, adds caramelized apples and some apple butter. Liz, a trained pastry chef and hilarious blogger, has the imagination to know this one would be great.

Because I'm insanely busy and, well, insane, I had to make my own brioche. I hadn't made Dorie's brioche before and this was a good chance to try her technique (we flipped for Peter Reinhart's recipe when I made brioche for The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge). I won't go into the brioche recipe here, but it was delicious buttery perfection. I gave one loaf to a neighbor and used most of the other for this recipe.

Dorie has us caramelizing apples for the bread pudding, and that's exactly how I make my candy apple pie, except I really caramelize them. After I caramelized the apples, I put them on a plate along with the puddle of goo in the bottom of the pan.

Here's where that tiny doubting voice in the back of my head kicked in. I wasn't sure if I'd cut the brioche too thick or too thin, if I was spreading too much or too little apple butter, etc. But I moved along and made the custard. While pouring it in to the dish, I poured quite a bit of it on the counter, over the edge and down the front of the cabinets and onto the floor. Sugary, sticky custard. In the drawers, all over the drawer pulls, on some of the "stuff" on the counter, the floor...it was a fun clean up for a Sunday night. Not.

Even without the spilled custard there seemed to be way too much custard for the amount of bread. Fearing the dreaded egginess that has taken over the group from time to time, I held back on about a cup of custard.

This baked for about an hour and 20 minutes. It cooled for about 5 minutes before I dug in (I couldn't help it!) It was rich, complex, buttery and loaded with apple flavor. I should have used all of the custard because the top got a little too brown, but it was delicious.

Once again, Dorie proved that her bread pudding is not your run of the mill bread pudding. I'll definitely make this one again. Many thanks to Liz for hosting this week and choosing a delicious and unusual recipe for us to try. If you'd like the recipe, Liz has it here. And while you're at it, check out what the other TWD bakers did with this one. You'll find them here.