Any pastry chef worth his tart can whip up a sumptuous treat using artisanal chocolate or fresh-picked, peak-season berries. But it takes a truly gifted sweetsmith to turn out a tempting masterpiece from a basket of day-old bread.
Like most things French, bread pudding was invented as a way to use up baguettes that had seen better days. The dried cubes of bread are tossed with sweetened cream and eggs, then baked to the consistency of a loose, moist cake. It's the dessert-course version of traditional turkey-day stuffing. And like its savory counterpart, flawed renditions run the gamut from mushy gruel to desiccated nothingness.
After choking down enough forgettable versions to build a cheap foam mattress, we found two that got everything right: at Grotto in Beacon Hill and Sel de la Terre in Natick. Grotto's luscious banana bread pudding baked up into a moister version of its namesake. Sel de la Terre's took a looser approach, steaming cubes of buttery brioche and cornbread with rum-soaked currants. Grotto's came dressed in burnt-caramel ice cream and sticky caramel sauce. Sel de la Terre's wore a translucent blanket of gingered crème anglaise. This close heat persisted until the very last garnish. Grotto's buttered-nut sprinkles were addictive, but it was Sel de la Terre's housemade raspberry preserves which cut through the creamy custard with bright, bracing acidity that proved the sweetest of sweet spots.
Advantage, Sel de la Terre.
TRY IT WITH THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE
Old-Fashioned Bread Pudding, $8.95 (left)
Sel de la Terre, Natick Collection, 1245 Worcester St., Natick. 508-650-1800.
TRY IT WITH THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE ELSE
Banana Bread Pudding, $9
Grotto, 37 Bowdoin St.,
Boston. 617-227-3434.
