A rye bread and butter pudding from Salt & Time for the #ryelove season!

This month we are celebrating the wonderful rye bread together with Karaway Bakery and Rosehip + Rye. As part of their #ryelove initiative, I am sharing a recipe from my cookbook Salt and Time which celebrates my love of rye bread since childhood and also offers a less known approach of using rye in desserts! Take note, this trend is going to go BIG! So join in now!

photo by Lizzy Mayson from Salt and Time

A lot of my early childhood memories feature my maternal grandparents’ kitchen: the tiny space in their Soviet one-room apartment with a wooden table in the middle and a red lampshade hanging over it. That was the stage for some very special moments, from playing my favourite ‘train game’ with my grandpa (the premise could not be simpler, we’d be having tea while pretending to be in a train compartment) to gobbling up the food prepared by my grandma. One particular food-related memory stuck with me till this day and I can see myself so clearly at that table under the red lampshade eating a slice of buttered rye bread with sugar. The idea for that came after watching an episode of a popular Soviet TV series The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, where the charismatic protagonist makes himself that very snack. Set in the post-WWII Soviet Union, the film gave a good insight into the rather dreary gastronomic realities of the 1950s. A contemporary of that era, my grandma was surprised at my eagerness for the sugary slice of bread, as to her it was a symbol of the hard years. I have not revisited this snack for decades, but its taste came back to me while brainstorming recipes for this chapter. Taking inspiration from a classic British bread and butter pud, I’ve made this Sovietized version which I find marries the two strands of my culinary identity so well.

Serves 8

16 slices of Russian rye bread

Unsalted butter, enough to butter each slice plus the baking dish

1/2 cup of sour cherries or sultanas

2 tsp of the allspice

600ml of whole milk

200ml double cream

2 bay leaves

1 tsp of toasted coriander seeds

8 egg yokes

100g of brown sugar, plus a few pinches for dusting

Butter a medium ovenproof dish. Cut the sourdough bread into 16 slices, removing the crust (make sure to keep it, as it will come in handy when making kvass, see p.X). Generously butter each slice and lay 8 slices at the bottom of the dish, making sure they are as snug as possible.

Add a layer of sour cherries or sultanas. If using the cherries then roughly chop them up in advance. Sprinkle 1 tsp of the spice mix and cover with another layer of bread. Set aside while you prepare the custard.

Heat up the milk, cream, bay leaves and coriander seeds in a pot. Do keep an eye on it, as you don’t want the milk and cream to boil. As soon as the mix reaches boiling point, turn off the heat and leave to infuse for 30 minutes. Then strain through a sieve to get rid off the bay leaves and coriander seeds.

Beat 8 egg yokes with sugar until well incorporated. Next add your infused milk and mix well.

Pour the custard over the bread, sprinkle with the remaining spice mix and some sugar, and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 160C for 30 minutes or until the custard has set. Serve immediately.

This pudding is so rich and warming, that you might want to serve it after a light meal, rather than as part of a massive feast. But then, I’d never stop you from indulging.

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