Bread pudding is by far one of my favorite dishes. It’s incredibly versatile. You can make it for a dessert, for a savory side, or in this case, as the main course! You can also make it the night before and just pop it in for breakfast the next morning. This rich breakfast bread pudding takes the classic eggs benedict and puts a country spin on it. Country benedict bread pudding is sure to be a crowd pleaser for morning potlucks or brunches.
Eggs Benedict
Eggs benedict is a breakfast classic that if you’ve never had it, I suggest you try it sometime because it’s one of my faves! A traditional eggs benny consists of an English muffin, Canadian bacon or thick-cut ham, a poached egg, and hollandaise sauce. This eggs benny recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch gets rave reviews and might be worth checking out if you’re looking more for a classic take on the dish.
For my recipe, however, instead of ham, we used crumbled country pork sausage. We also used scrambled eggs with cheese instead of poached eggs. However, the hollandaise is really what makes the dish though. Traditional hollandaise sauce is incredibly difficult to make for most average people like myself, so I’m not gonna lie. I cheated. I used Knorr’s hollandaise mix for this recipe, which you can buy here. If you’re feeling super fancy, go ahead and make the hollandaise yourself, but I promise you… nobody else will know if you use the packets!
Bread Pudding Basics
The most important step for bread pudding is getting your bread nice and crusty. Nice and crusty are two words I never thought would be in the same sentence together, haha! But by allowing your bread to become stale the day before, it doesn’t turn to complete mush for bread pudding. Here’s how I did it.
For this recipe, I used a large, wide loaf of French bread, not a skinny baguette. When preparing the bread, I cut it into 1- 1 1/2 inch cubes and allowed it to dry out in a single layer on a baking sheet over night. By spreading it out on a baking sheet in a single layer, it allows air to reach all of the bread equally ensuring that all of it becomes stale and crusty rather than just the top. After about 10 hours, I moved the bread to the baking dish that I planned to bake it in.
Assembling the Bread Pudding
After letting the bread sit overnight, I browned up the sausage, onion and garlic mixture and made the hollandaise sauce at the same time. It’s important that you make them at the same time because you want them to cool before adding eggs to the bread pudding. This is so that they don’t cook the eggs before they have a chance to soak into the bread. After the sausage and hollandaise cooled down a bit, I added everything in with the bread cubes. This is the order I used: sausage mixture, eggs and cheese, hollendaise, more cheese. Then, instead of baking it right away, which you can still absolutely do, I put it in my fridge overnight. That way it would be a simple breakfast that I could just pop in the next morning.
Once I pulled it out of the fridge the next morning, I didn’t even have to let it come to room temp. I just threw it right in the oven and it was perfectly done and crispy on top after an hour. When the bread pudding finished baking, I topped it with some green onions.
Make Ahead Country Benedict Bread Pudding
Equipment
- 13×9 Casserole Dish
Ingredients
- 1 loaf wide French bread
- 1 lb ground country pork sausage
- 1 medium-large onion, diced
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 pkts Knorr's Hollandaise mix, made according to package directions. Approximately 3 cups of hollandaise sauce
- 6 eggs
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 3 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided
- 3 green onions, sliced
Instructions
- Cut the French bread into 1 or 1 1/2 inch cubes. Spread them out on a cookie sheet in a single layer and leave uncovered for at least 8-10 hours or until bread becomes stale and crusty.
- In a frying pan over medium high heat, fry up the sausage, breaking it into small crumbles until it is mostly browned. Add the onion and garlic to the pan. Saute until the sausage is cooked and the onions are softened and fragrant. Set aside and allow to cool until just barely warm.
- Meanwhile, make the hollandaise sauce and allow it to cool until it is just barely warm.
- Whisk eggs in a small bowl with a pinch of salt and pepper and 1 cup of cheese.
- Add the sausage mixture to the bread cubes, then the egg and cheese mixture, then the hollandaise sauce. Mix everything well to evenly distribute all ingredients throughout the bread pudding.
- Top with remaining cheese and cover with tin foil. Place in the fridge for a few hours, or preferably overnight.
- Approximately 10 minutes before you want to start baking, preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the casserole straight from the fridge covered with tin foil for 45 minutes. Remove the tin foil and bake an additional 15 minutes. When done, allow to cool 10 minutes before serving. Top with sliced green onions.
Notes
Voila! Now you have a deliciously easy crowd pleasing breakfast. I hope you try it and find it to be just as tasty as we did. If you like this recipe, feel free to share your thoughts, share this post and please subscribe for updates! You can check out my other recipes here or similar recipes below. Thanks!
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