Baked bread à la grand-mère

It is milchig season and it seems I have a real liking for all things “au gratin”……

Here comes a way to use some dry leftover challa or other white bread that is not exactly soft any more. It is a real grandma recipe from the old days when bread was never thrown away. It might not sound like something very fancy when reading through, but I just love it. It is prepared very quickly and can be kept warm on the plata.

Baked bread:

- bread (2 small loaves or one big)

- sugar

- vanilla sugar

- flaked almonds

- butter (to grease the oven pan and some more for on top at the very end)

- diced dried fruits or chocolate drops (optional)

- milk (about 1 liter)

How to:

Remove some or all of the bread crust if it is too hard. Cut the bread into thick slices or cubes.

Grease oven pan well with butter.

Put bread slices into a bowl filled with milk one after another. Let soak well, drain only a tiny bit.

Arrange first slice in the oven pan, sprinkle with sugar and vanilla sugar, proceed like this until all bread is in the pan. If you use the bread diced just fill in bread and sugar in layers. (You can also add dried fruits or chocolate drops now, but I prefer it very plain.) On top of all the bread slices sprinkle some more sugar, add some flakes of butter and quite a bit of flaked almonds. Bake at 180° Celsius for about 15 minutes or until golden brown on top. (Beware of the almonds…..they should not get too dark!)

Serve with home made jam, apple sauce or even ice cream.