Chocolate Bread Pudding Recipe: 4 of the Best Breads to Use

Chocolate bread pudding is a soft, sweet custard and bread dessert using stale bread cubes and chocolate custard. Day-old bread soaks up the custard better than fresh bread, especially if it’s a soft, enriched bread like brioche or challah. Add chocolate flavor to the custard with chocolate chips, cocoa powder, or a combination of the two ingredients.

Follow the tips below for making chocolate bread pudding.

1. 1. Add cocoa powder to the custard instead of melted chocolate. Adding a thick semi-liquid ingredient, like melted chocolate, to the custard changes its texture and could prevent the bread from thoroughly soaking it up because of how thick it is. Cocoa powder combines with milk and eggs to create a chocolate mixture that’s the same texture as a traditional bread pudding custard.
2. 2. Cover the bread pudding for at least half of the baking time. To prevent the top of the bread pudding from burning during the long baking process, cover the pudding with aluminum foil. Remove the aluminum foil with about fifteen to twenty minutes left in the baking time, so the top of the pudding gets golden brown and crispy.
3. 3. Use day-old bread. Fresh bread is too soft to work in bread pudding because it disintegrates after soaking up the custard. Stale bread works much better. Slice a loaf of bread into thick slices, then cut the slices into one-inch cubes. Leave the cubes out on a baking sheet for a few hours or overnight to let them dry out.

Use any of the four bread types below for making soft and creamy chocolate bread pudding:

1. 1. Brioche bread: An enriched dough with sugar, butter, and eggs, brioche is soft and chewy with a tender crust. The slightly sweet dough works well in a bread pudding because it already has many of the same ingredients. It’s crucial to use stale brioche bread since it’s so soft.
2. 2. Challah bread: Similar to brioche but using eggs and oil instead of eggs and butter, challah bread is a traditional braided bread served on many Jewish holidays. Prepare challah bread for bread pudding the same way as brioche since they are both soft and tender enriched bread.
3. 3. Croissants: A flaky French pastry, a croissant is full of buttery layers to soak up a bread pudding custard. To make croissant bread pudding, cut croissants into as even-sized cubes as possible, then let the cubes sit out for a bit to go stale. Since croissants are already crispy and flaky, they take less time to go stale than other types of bread.
4. 4. French baguette: A baguette goes stale quickly and soaks up liquid reasonably evenly, so it’s an optimal choice for bread pudding. Baguettes have a thicker, chewier crust than brioche or challah, so cut the crusts off or leave them on for a nice textural contrast.

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