Bread Pudding (Budino di pane)

When I was a little girl I lived in Peru, and my grandmother, who was Italian, used to make bread pudding, which I loved and still love. 
The bread pudding is a very simple dessert which originally was made with the leftover bread, because before nothing was thrown away, all the leftovers were preserved and used to prepare a wide variety of dishes, and that is how usually new recipes were invented.

The bread pudding is one of my favorite desserts, and probably not only for its simplicity, but because the smells and flavors automatically transport my mind back in the past, and I can relive sweet moments of my childhood.

The bread is an international food, so is bread pudding. Indeed, if you take a look on Internet, many countries claim its paternity. Countries like Peru, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and of course European countries such as Italy, Spain, the Eastern European countries, etc., they all use bread as principal ingredient, but the secondary ingredients change a little from country to country.

Like I said, the base material is the leftover bread, but I will propose you a variant with plain breadcrumbs, because nowadays nobody keeps the bread of the day before, and because before old bread would become hard, but never moldy. 

Ingredients

• 1 lb (~500 gr) plain breadcrumbs
• 5 eggs
• 4 cups (~1 L) milk;
• 1 cup raisins;
• 1 cup sugar (1 ½ cup if you prefer brown sugar);
• 1/4 cup rum, or Pisco, or Grappa (or some sweetened water if you don’t like liquors);
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon;
• 1 tsp vanilla extract;
• Salt.

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 

In a bowl, soak the raisins in rum, or pisco, or grappa. If you do not like liquors you can soak them in sweetened water. Let it stand. 

In another bigger bowl, put the breadcrumbs and mix them with the milk, pour it slowly to avoid lumps. 

In another bowl, beat the eggs vigorously with a pinch of salt, and then add the sugar, the cinnamon and the vanilla extract. Beat it again. 

At this point mix the eggs and the bread together, and stir them until all the ingredients are well mixed. 

Put it in a base of a nonstick round baking dish. Drain the raisins and put them on top of the mixture and aloud them to sink a little. 

Bake it in the preheated oven for 40 minutes. Aloud to cool it before serving. 

Delicious!