Bread pudding!

I read a short article in Time that mentioned how Americans throw away a lot of old bread. Who are these people? We are big bread fans here, often picking up a loaf of Italian bread from our favorite bakery and on the rare occasion that it does start to get old we are at no loss for what to do with it - french toast, garlic toast, grilled cheese, bread pudding...

Over the weekend I saw this recipe for bread pudding with bananas. I glanced at it, but what were the odds that we'd have old bananas and old bread at the same time? Pretty good I guess, because today we did!

We mixed up half of a batch and loved this bread pudding! In this recipe, unlike our standard version, you toss the bread in butter instead of mixing the butter into the liquid. Each bite of bread was nice and buttery. Also, it has a good amount of vanilla extract and the white sugar gave it a lighter flavor than the brown sugar that we had used in the past. I sliced the bananas into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices and they had a bizarre texture - squishy like tofu - but really nice flavor. In the future I might dice them or slice them thinner so that they aren't as noticeable. We used 1% milk - I imagine that this would be very good, but also very rich with the half and half.

It made a lovely dessert, but also reminded me of a baked french toast or other decadent breakfast food. Yum!