What do you do if you’re left with some dry bread? I, personally, have created a list of dishes where I’d use remaining bread – which doesn’t really happen very often, since I tend to store the stock of home baked bread in the freezer, and by portions, taking them out according to the expected need. Well, sometimes it happens I don’t calculate it that well. And given that throwing bread is not an option for me, I try to recycle it in various dishes.

Fortunately, bread can be used in savory as well as in sweet dishes, which leaves us with a great spectrum of use – the first dishes using dry bread I would think of -if you ask me- would be a) repápalos (a dessert of the poor, they call it – absolutely yummy!), b) meat/legume balls or patties and c) bread pie/pudding. Furthermore, I always make sure to turn some bread into breadcrumbs, and sometimes I’d leave some of it for croûtons. Also, bread dumplings are very common around here, and they make a nice side dish for almost any (mostly meat-based) stew. A great choice, indeed, don’t you think?

So, here I want to share with you this recipe for a truly tasty bread pie, inspired by the abundance of currants I’ve found myself in – yesterday I *finally* used the last bag of frozen red currants from last season (turning them into a jam) – while the new ones are popping up already! Yay! However, here I used the fresh ones.

BREAD PIE WITH RED AND BLACK CURRANTS

220g of dry/semi-dry bread
cca. 200ml milk
a dash of cinnamon
cca. 200g cooked, ground almonds (see the note)
3 eggs (M size)
75g powdered sugar + for serving
250g red & black currants, cleaned
75g molten butter + a bit for the mold

Note: I used cooked, coarsely ground almonds from making the horchata. You could substitute them with almond meal, and in case you do, you should increase a bit the quantity of milk then.

1. Cut the bread into cubes. Bring the milk with a dash of cinnamon to boil and pour over the bread cubes, and stir. Let sit for a while, for the bread to absorb the milk.

2. If using the cooked ground almonds like me, run them in a blender for a while to obtain the “paste”. Add the bread and process again until smooth.

3. Finally, add powdered sugar and eggs, and molten butter. Pour half of the smooth batter into a prepared, buttered mold (of 18 or 20cm in diameter) and sprinkle evenly with half of the currants. Proceed by pouring in the rest of the batter and top with the rest of the currants.

4. Bake at 180ºC for an hour or until golden. Here the technique of inserting the blade of the knife won’t work, since it will always come out wet – and that’s how it’s got to be. This pie is on the moist side which makes it so delicious and light!

5. Let the pie cool down completely (or till lukewarm, at least), then cut into slices. Serve with powdered sugar.