Bread Pudding...keeping it simple

I found these ratios to make a great bread pudding. The key to a perfect output is multi-fold. First soak the bread for an hour, trust the recipe because the mixture looks crazy loose at first but after an hour is perfect. Second, cook in as pan, covered, and in a waterbath. In my opinion the lack of a crust is a good thing. Lastly, consider pressing the bread pudding as it cools. This can be done easily by setting a similarly sized pan on top of the one with the bread pudding in it, resting this in the fridge with a few jars on top.

Bread Pudding

1# bread, preferably a rich egg bread, brioche, challah, or egg buns

1 quart Heavy Cream, this is not a diet dish

2 whole eggs

6 yolks

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 -2 cups sweetener, white sugar is a good start, but brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup would all be good used in combination

Dice the bread into inch square sized pieces. Mix everything else together before adding the bread, toss, rest for an hour. Pre-heat oven to 350. Bring a pot of water to boil and turn off. After an hour turn the bread mixture into a pan. Note 1. Cover this pan with plastic wrap, then foil. Place this pan in a larger pan and cover this pan with foil leaving a corner open. Place this contraption in the over and poor the warm water that was boiled into the big pan that holds the pan with the breading mixture....this is a waterbath and allows the mixture to cook evenly. Cook roughly an hour for a two inch high pan. The mixture will firm up and puff a bit, then fall once out of the heat. Press for a few hours, unmold, cut, reheat to serve.

Note 1. To make unmolding easy use pan spray to coat the inside of the pan, then coat the inside of the pan with plastic wrap leaving a good amount over the edges since the only bad thing that could happen is an edge of the plastic wrap falls in the pudding. When you cover the top of this pan secure it to the inner lining. The pan spray makes the plastic wrap stick to the pan while allowing you to push it around also.