Bread Pudding with Lemon and Raisins

Here is a bread-based dessert adapted from Carol Field’s book The Italian Baker. It’s a basic, moist bread pudding that doesn’t call for any hard-to-find ingredients. I’ve served this pudding with only a dusting of powdered sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. But if you served this with a sauce, such as crème anglaise, it would be a truly rich dessert.

Steps

1. Trim the crusts from the bread. Tear or cut the bread into 2-inch pieces and put them in a large mixing bowl. Heat the milk, butter, and sugar just to a boil and pour over the bread. Set aside for 2 hours, occasionally pushing down the pieces of bread to immerse them in the milk.
2. Meanwhile, put the raisins and bourbon in a small bowl and add warm water to cover. Let stand until raisins are plump, about 20 minutes. Drain well.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
4. Squeeze excess milk from the bread and break it up with your hands. Mix in the raisins, eggs, lemon zest, cinnamon, and vanilla.
5. Generously butter a 2-quart baking dish. Pour in the bread mixture.
6. Bake until the top puffs up slightly and is a light golden brown, about 30 to 45 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. To serve, put powdered sugar in a fine meshed sieve and tap the sieve over the pudding, dusting it with sugar until the top is completely white. Serve each portion with a lemon wedge.