Bread Pudding

I always wondered how this bread pudding tasted - the recipe always made use of stale bread and eggs with milk and spices together baked to a golden brown - served with ice-cream and some kind of sauce....... which was generally a bourbon sauce as bread pudding is a delicacy from the Southern States of America where bourbon and whiskey are loved plenty.
I had tasted this amazing bread pudding at our favorite restaurant "Bubba Gump" and had fallen in love with the bread, nutmeg and cinnamon together with that awesome sauce.
Had been wanting to recreate this dish for a long time - but, never came around to making it. The other day I had baked white bread at home and somehow it was not used up. Home made bread tends to get spoilt in 2 days. Hence had to use it up. That's when the hubby asked me to make this dish.
The recipe is a little bit from here, a little from there. Frankly, its the same recipe if you see it everywhere, just a teaspoon extra of this or a pinch more of that.

Ingredients

7 cups bread - bite size pieces of white bread or baguette
2 tablespoons butter - melted
2 cups milk
2 cups sugar - you can use brown sugar to get that brown color.
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 teaspoon nutmeg powder
1/2 teaspoon allspice powder
4 eggs
1/2 cup black raisins
1/2 cup pecans - chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. On a cookie sheet spread the bread pieces and then cover the bread with the melted butter. Put this cookie sheet int he oven and get the bread a little crisp, say for 10 minutes. In the meantime - in a big mixing bowl take the milk, sugar, spices and eggs and mix well and make it into a custard. Add the raisins and the pecans and then the crisp bread to the mixing bowl and cover the bread with the custard mixture. Take a 13X9 baking dish and grease it. Now add the bread and custard mixture to it. Bake it in 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven for 45 minutes. If the top starts getting brown, just cover it with an aluminum foil and bake for the full 45 minutes.
Serve with vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

You can just add a bit extra zing to this pudding by soaking the raisins and the pecans in 1/4 cup bourbon for 24 hours (or more) and then use it to make the bread pudding. It will be a slight bit boozy and will have a southern kick to it.