Best Bread Pudding Recipe (with Caramel Sauce) - House of Nash Eats (2024)

Our homemade bread pudding recipe is practically foolproof and makes enough to feed a crowd. Made with stale brioche bread and fresh eggs, the baked bread pudding has a wonderful custard texture and is perfect paired with our homemade caramel sauce!

The Best Bread Pudding Recipe

Not all bread pudding recipes are created equal. Too many result in soggy or bland slices, which is a tragedy since it’s so easy to get right! This is a classic recipe with just the right balance of eggy custard and bread for a dessert that is a real treat. Using our recipe as your base, you can then customize and branch into other flavors by adding dried fruit, more spices, or even chocolate!

What is Bread Pudding?

Bread pudding is a classic dessert made from leftover or stale bread, combined with ingredients like milk, eggs, sugar, and spices. The bread is soaked in a custard mixture, allowing it to absorb the flavors, and then baked until it forms a soft, pudding-like texture.

Once baked, the pudding develops a golden crust while remaining moist and flavorful on the inside. It's often served warm and can be enjoyed on its own or paired with sauces like caramel, vanilla custard, or a dollop of whipped cream.

What does bread pudding taste like?

As you can probably tell just by looking at the list of ingredients, this classic bread pudding tastes a lot like French toast, albeit with a softer, more custard-like texture and creamier flavor. You will taste sweet cream and vanilla which gets soaked up with the eggs by the brioche bread.

What I love about this particular bread pudding recipe is that it is the perfect canvas for getting creative. Once you have made the original version, try branching out by adding a sprinkle of cinnamon or the zest of a couple of oranges and some chocolate chips. Or sprinkle fresh or frozen cranberries, blueberries, or other berries or dried fruit in with the cubed brioche bread.

You can even make a chocolate bread pudding by whisking in ¼ cup of cocoa powder with the custard mixture before pouring it over the bread!

Easy Bread Pudding ingredients

Scroll down to the recipe card below this post for ingredient quantities and full instructions.

• Stale bread - A loaf of day-old brioche or challah bread is the best type of bread for making the best bread pudding recipe. It's important that the bread be stale so it can soak up the custard mixture. Fresh bread doesn't work as well, although you can cube it, spread it on a baking sheet in a single layer, and bake at a low temperature for 20 to 30 minutes to help dry it out in a pinch.
• Eggs - Use fresh, large eggs for that rich, custardy taste.
• Sugar - Granulated sugar provides just the right amount of sweetness for both the bread pudding and the homemade caramel sauce that we serve with this dessert.
• Half-and-half or heavy cream - This makes the bread pudding richer than if you were to just use milk alone. Erin's recipe calls for half-and-half, but I almost never have that on hand so I used cream instead with great results.
• Whole milk - I recommend whole milk for the best results.
• Vanilla extract - I always use my homemade vanilla extract for baking.
• Salt - Just enough to balance the other flavors.
• Butter - This gives the caramel sauce a wonderful, buttery flavor.

How to Make Bread Pudding

1. Cube your bread. Start by cutting up a loaf of stale bread into roughly 1-inch cubes using a serrated knife. Leave the crusts on and everything as they only add to the texture of the bread pudding once it's baked.

2. Whisk custard ingredients together. Combine eggs, sugar, heavy cream or half-and-half, milk, vanilla, and salt in a large bowl and whisk well to make the custard for the bread pudding.

3. Soak. Pour the egg mixture over the bread cubes in a large baking dish that you have sprayed with nonstick cooking spray or rubbed with butter. You might need to push the bread pieces down into the custard a bit at first to make sure they all get wet. Cover with plastic wrap and transfer to the fridge for 1 to 2 hours so the bread can absorb the custard before baking.

4. Bake. Once the bread pudding has soaked up the custard, bake it for 50 to 60 minutes until it is puffy and golden brown around the edges. It should be set and no longer jiggy in the center when it is done. Remove from the oven and let cool a bit before serving warm or at room temperature.
5. Make the caramel sauce. As soon as the bread pudding goes in the oven I start on the caramel sauce. This version uses a wet method by combining sugar and water in a saucepan and cooking until the sugar has dissolved. Then you increase the heat and boil for 5-8 minutes until the sugar syrup turns a lovely light amber brown color. You don't want to go much darker than this or the caramel may burn and taste bitter.
6. Add remaining caramel ingredients. When the sugar has changed colors to a lovely amber, remove the caramel from the heat and add the half-and-half or cream while stirring. It might bubble or seize at first, but don't panic and just keep stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the cubed butter, vanilla, and salt, and continue to stir until the caramel sauce comes together. If for some reason the butter remains separate from the caramel, put the saucepan back over the heat for a minute or two until everything bubbles together and combines. This sauce will be thin but it will thicken as it cools.

7. Slice and serve. Once the bread pudding has cooled, slice it into squares and serve with the caramel sauce for drizzling on top of the warm bread pudding. You could also just dust it with powdered sugar and serve it with fresh berries and a squeeze of lemon juice too, if you prefer.

Easy Bread Pudding Recipe tips for success

• Use a good quality, stale bread. While you can technically make this old-fashioned bread pudding recipe with almost any kind of bread, we like the results best using something like brioche or challah. But leftover croissants, French bread, or Texas toast are other good options and you can even use this recipe with things like leftover hamburger or hot dog buns or dinner rolls as a way of sprucing up something that has gone stale and avoiding food waste!

What to serve with this Bread Pudding Recipe

Bread pudding is delicious all on its own but it's extra amazing with fresh fruit or a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side and a delicious dessert sauce drizzled on top. If caramel isn't your thing, try one of these other delicious dessert sauces with your bread pudding!

• Vanilla Sauce
• Raspberry Coulis
• Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce
• Peanut Butter Dessert Sauce

Storing Bread Pudding

You can keep any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. It can be served chilled, but I prefer it warmed up in the oven or microwave first. The caramel sauce will also last 1-2 weeks in a jar in the fridge.

You can freeze individual slices of bread pudding for up to 2 months. Just wrap them well in plastic wrap and thaw in the fridge overnight before reheating and enjoying.

Best Bread Pudding Recipe FAQs

Freaky Friday Blog Swap

Today is Freaky Friday, which is where a bunch of blogging friends swap blogs to try each other's recipes. Freaky Friday is organized by Michaela from An Affair From the Heart and it's always exciting to see who I will be paired up with!

This round I was secretly assigned my friend Erin, who is one of my favorite foodie friends. She has an amazing collection of recipes (I made her Slow Cooker Applesauce Pulled Chicken Sandwiches for a past round of Freaky Friday and they are still a favorite!) and I immediately though of making one of her many pancake recipes like her funfetti pancakes, nutella pancakes, or bacon pancakes.

But as soon as I saw her bread pudding with caramel sauce I changed my plan because I had a loaf of brioche bread that I wanted to use up and I knew Erin would have a solid recipe! We enjoy it as a dessert, but honestly you could get away with eating bread pudding for breakfast or brunch!

More like this Easy Bread Pudding

• Chocolate Texas Sheet Cake
• Banana Bars with Penuche Frosting
• Meyer Lemon Pudding Cake
• Strawberries and Cream Sheet Cake
• Kentucky Butter Cake