Bread Pudding With Caramel Sauce — a simple brioche-based custard dessert

The useful part

Joanna Cismaru • Last Updated: 9/15/26 47 Comments This post may contain affiliate links. This Bread Pudding is soft, spiced brioche baked into a custard that sets around it, then drizzled with a caramel sauce that takes 5 minutes. Bread Pudding Made Simple Bread pudding started as a way to avoid throwing bread out, which is the best possible origin for a dessert.

How it works

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• French bread works and gives you a slightly less rich result.
• Challah works, so does French bread, so does any soft egg based bread.
• Half and half works in place of both if that's what you have.

What to take from it

Which bread: brioche is my first choice because it's rich and buttery and it soaks beautifully. Give it a proper whisk rather than a stir, because you want the eggs fully broken up. A toothpick isn't reliable here, because you'll hit a bread cube and learn nothing about whether the custard has set.

Example or evidence

• Fresh bread is already full of moisture, so it can only take on so much custard before it starts collapsing into mush.
• Day old bread has dried out and it drinks the custard, right through to the middle, and still holds its shape in the oven.
• Then there's the sauce, which is butter, brown sugar, and cream in a small pan.
• Half a cup, scattered over the bread before the custard goes on, and they plump up in the oven into little pockets of sweetness.

Details worth keeping

It's a dessert built on stale bread and that's what I love about it. The custard itself is milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and warm spice. Then it bakes into something soft and set and faintly wobbly.

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