Chocolate Bread Pudding

With HomeMade Challah Bread:

This recipe is great for all of that leftover holiday bread that nobody seems to want to even look at anymore. Once beautiful, soft and fluffy now stale and unattractively torn apart...its only hope_Bread Pudding. I guess the best way to describe it is like a warm chocolatey french toast.

12-1 inch thick SLICES OF BREAD
1.5 quarts HALF & HALF
10 ounces CHOCOLATE (bittersweet 75%, chopped)
1 tbsp COCOA POWDER
1/2 tsp NUTMEG
1/2 tsp CINNAMON
1/4 cup GRAN MARNIER
1 tsp VANILLA EXTRACT
10 EGG YOLKS
1 1/2 cup SUGAR

So I grab to leftover stale bread and cut it into one inch by one inch squares while at the same time slicing off the crust. Next I pour my H & H into a 5 quart sauce pan, turn the heat on low and bring the temperature just to about 100 degrees. An easy way to measure the heat is just above body temperature, so I dip my finger in (clean finger) periodically to get it just right…warm but not hot.

At this point I take the H & H off of the stove and add in the chocolate and stir it in until completely dissolved and resembles chocolate milk...which it pretty much is. Next I add in the cocoa powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, gran marnier and stir again.
In a separate bowl I throw in the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla extract and blend together with my hand mixer until creamy and smooth. Then I add the two together_similar to the method we used for "galaktobouriko". I stirred this up and threw in the bread to let it soak up this chocolatey mixture for 30-40 minutes.

Then I pour everything into a 4 inch deep baking tray and cover it loosely with aluminum foil. I punch a few wholes in the foil with my knife and throw the tray into the 325 degree preheated oven.

45 minutes later…we were ready to eat some "clog your heart up" bread pudding. Definitely not for the health conscious people out there but it is damn good.

ENJOY!

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