Last week I mentioned a couple of times that I was going to make a savory gingerbread bread pudding, and got a few questions about how it was possible. It's finally made and I have the proof!

It started with clearing out the freezer, but unlike Johnliu's refrigerator velcro, this isn't a fast way to feed hungry chicks. :) I had a two quart container full of gingerbread from a catered event a year ago. It wasn't freezer burned or anything, but a lot of gingerbread! I also had a loaf of a not well risen bread made from sourdough starter discard (i.e., soaked flour), which was very sour and pretty dense. I cubed them up and set them on a rack in a baking sheet to air dry. It took forever! The first couple of days the house smelled variously of gingerbread or sourdough!

Originally, I was going to toast star anise and cardamom for this, but I've been working very hard (no time to cook even) and just didn't have the oomph, so then I thought I'd just use some Chinese Five Spice, but forgot. Instead, I started looking for things in my spice rack that needed to go. Old spices that have lost their verve are still useable if you put them in things that won't get a gritty texture from using so much, so into the custard went a lot of powdered ginger and ground cardamom, plus reasonable amounts of newer chili powder and chipotle powder. I soaked the bread/gingerbread chunks in the custard with a weight for hours.

There wasn't any smoked turkey sausage at the store, so I bought a smoked beef salami. Diced that and a couple of plain chicken breasts. I also added a cup of leftover roasted cauliflower floret-ettes, about a cup of equally left over caramelized bowstring onions, and a goodly double handful of cut up small sugar snap peas. A couple of bags of presliced cremini mushrooms were sautéed and cooked down with madeira and a handful very old (i.e., reduced to mildness) mixed peppercorns. Into that went a few stalks of small diced celery and some of the last of the peppers from the garden, minced. A couple red serranos, a red jalapeño, and a guajillo. I sautéed a big onion, diced, separately with a lot of dill seeds, then stirred that in too.

See, bread pudding should be like a treasure hunt. :)

All the above were combined and layered into my lasagna dish with whole pistachios. I rescued a rather good block of Emmenthaler, from the fuzzy blue fairy and used a microplane ribbon grater over the top because I was too tired to wash something bigger. There was enough to kind of rearrange it to cover the whole thing.

And that's how to make a savory gingerbread pudding. In the end, there's only a bit of heat, even with all that pepper. There is sweetness from the gingerbread, but not really much more than from using white bread except at the edges where the crumbs got compressed and crunchy. And awesome. The spices and the smokiness of the sausage definitely keep it savory. It's good! And perfect for the stormy weather. :)

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It looks better on the plate than in the dish. :)
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