I'm making this right now to take to a Yacht Club breakfast in the morning. The recipe was posted on the original FLDG, but it's so good it's worth sharing again:
Date: 17-Feb-2003 01:22
Author: Jenise Email
Subject: RC: Sourdough Sausage (Breakfast) Bread Pudding
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Asked to bring a dish to a Sunday champagne potluck brunch, I decided to put the flavors of breakfast into a hearty bread pudding. It was a huge hit so I'm sharing my recipe.
A note about the sourdough: don't be tempted to use any other kind of bread unless you plain don't like sourdough. The flavor is terrific but so too is the texture, and the top layer is a crunchy-chewy bit of divinity. Buy the sourdough made by your store bakery that's sliced and sold in plastic bags such that there's no hard crust--the entire loaf is usable.
Prep time: Once the pudding's assembled, let it 'soak' about 8 hrs or overnight. Baking time's about an hour and a half. Keeps well in a warm oven for hours.
Serves 8-12.
1 large approx 2 lb loaf sour dough bread, diced
2 lbs breakfast sausage links
1 large onion, diced
1/4 c white wine
1 tsp salt (or more if your broth is un- or very lightly salted)
1/4 c chopped parsley
4 eggs
1 c heavy cream
1 cup milk
2-3 cups chicken broth
2 tblsp butter
Dice the bread and leave on open tray overnight to go stale, or bake in the oven for about 20 minutes at 350, then let cool.
In a frying pan, brown the sausage (don't worry about cooking it thoroughly, it's going to cook in the pudding anyway), then cut into 1/2 inch chunks. Remove all but about 2 tblsp of the sausage grease, then add the diced onion and saute until transluscent. Add the wine to the onions to deglaze the pan.
In a large casserole dish (about four-five quarts), mix bread, sausage, parsley and onions.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk, cream and 2 cups of the chicken broth. Add salt and pepper, then add the egg-milk mixture to the bread and sausage. Stir or toss with your fingers to make sure all the bread came in contact with some liquid. If the liquid level seems low, add more chicken broth. Melt the butter, drizzle over the top. Cover with foil and chill for about 8 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake covered for 45 minutes. At this point, remove foil, drop temperature to 350, and bake an additional 30 minutes. This cooking time worked for a pudding direct from the fridge--if yours is at room temperature, cooking time will be less.