The Best Bread Pudding

There's this really awesome DIY music space in Baltimore called the Floristree that has a really beautiful Christmas party every year. It's part pot-luck, part caroling, and a whole lot of revelry with your 100 closest friends in the Baltimore arts community.

This year, my contribution was bread pudding, fresh from a ridiculously large bread haul - I only used one loaf. This is a good recipe for dumpstered bread, because it's better if it's stale to begin with (you can dry it out in the oven if you don't have a few days to let it get stale on its own). I got to the party kind of late, but the few folks left descended on it like vultures. They loved it! I loved it (and I hate bread pudding usually)! I was really proud, because almost 100% of the ingredients in this I had found in a dumpster. I love it when that happens! I'm going to make another batch for my family's Christmas dinner...I'm just not going to tell them where the ingredients came from...

Unfortunately, the person I made this with gave me a lot of crap about where I got the recipe...

I got it from Paula Deen, the celebrity chef.

If you spend any amount of time around me, you will eventually understand that my guilty pleasure is cooking-themed reality TV shows (hopefully involving a battle). I watch a LOT of them. It's pretty embarrassing. Anyway, Paula Deen shows up as her sweet, butter-loving, diabetes-inducing self to play the role of judge on a lot of these shows. So, I'm kind of a sucker for her. Plus, considering how much everyone loved the dish, I'm convinced that this is actually the best bread pudding recipe. All you Paula Deen haters can shove it!

Here's the recipe, complete with a video how-to if you want to have the full experience:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/the-best-bread-pudding-recipe/index.html