Damning With Faint Praise

[madbaker]

This week's Resolution Recipe: Budino di Pane e Cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate Pudding).
"This is a family pudding -- do not expect anything exquisite."

Pour boiling milk over the bread, cut into thin slices. After allowing it to soak for approximately two hours, pass the mixture through a strainer to obtain a smooth cream; put it then on the fire, adding the sugar, butter, and chocolate, which you have grated. Stir the mixture often and boil it for some time. Then let it cool. Next add the eggs, first the yolks and then the whites, beaten until stiff. Cook in bain-marie in a smooth mold greased with butter and serve cold. To give it a more attractive appearance, it would not be a bad idea to cover the pudding with a custard after removing it from the mold. These amounts serve five people."
-Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, 1891.

100 g of good, ordinary bread (I used house-made, which is what we consider good and ordinary)
70 g of sugar
40 g of chocolate (I used 72%)
20 g of unsalted butter
4 deciliters of milk
3 eggses, separated
(whipped creme fraiche to serve)

Bring the milk to a boil, thinly slice the bread, and pour the milk over it. Let the bread steep for about two hours, then press the mixture through a strainer to produce a uniform paste. Set the paste over a low flame with the sugar, the butter, and the chocolate, stirring constantly. Cook the mixture for 5 minutes over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, and let it cool. Stir in the yolks one at a time, then whip the whites to a soft peak and gently fold them in. Divide into five greased ramekins. Bake the puddings set in a pan of simmering water at 325 for about 1 hour until it has set, and serve it cold. To improve the pudding's appearance, you might want to cover it with cream upon unmolding it.

What worked: I found a modernized version so I (mostly) didn't have to transcribe. The version I found had you steam in a double boiler, but I've always done bain-maries in the oven with simmering water around it.

I didn't bother to strain the bread; I just mashed it thoroughly in the saucepan before adding the other ingredients. This was surprisingly light and mousse-y as a batter with the addition of the egg whites. When baked, the texture was still fairly light and uniform since the long soak thoroughly broke down the bread. They poofed up nicely during the bake and using ramekins meant easy servings.

The flavor was unsurprisingly more milk chocolate/cocoa powder than the dark we prefer.

What didn't: No one uses deciliters. That's 400 ml to you and me.

Will I make it again? I might well. This would work better with a square of chocolate inserted in the middle, or maybe a frozen raspberry.

Comments

[kareina]

One of the weirdest things of moving to Sweden is that they do, in fact, use deciliters as a unit of cooking measure. Luckily, the standard measuring cups available in the store come in 1 and 0.5 dl size, so one doesn't have to even remember to move the decimal point for conversions.