Change is a mystifying thing. Bad change sneaks up on you and knocks you sideways, or you fight it as it creeps closer. And good change can feel unattainable, even when it’s possible — and then, once it arrives, it may leave you looking over your shoulder at what once was.
I am genetically programmed to resist anything that smells even a little bit like change. Major shifts in my life have turned me into the human equivalent of a roly poly facing a predator. I curl up and hope to god I can just roll away. My brother suffers from this condition, too, albeit more actively. He once tried to drag a decades-old, fraying corduroy recliner back down from the curb when my mom had deemed it unfit for even our basement. Trimmed tree limbs in our front yard once sent him into a tailspin.
All of that — the little armored bugs, the recliner, the branches — has been on my mind this week as I’ve stared down the biggest change of my professional life so far. It arrived on Friday at 5 p.m., when I logged off Slack and signed out of my Washington Post email and started my life as a freelancer. This is good change, the best kind. I planned for this change for months and looked forward to it with something like giddiness — and now that it’s here, I spend a few minutes every hour trying not to panic. Will anyone pay me to write about food — or about anything other than sports? Will I get bored? Will I be able to pull my own weight financially?
I have to be comfortable not knowing the answers to those questions. I have to be comfortable getting bored, at least occasionally, and I have to remember that for most of the past two years, I’d have killed for the chance to have a bored afternoon.
So that’s me: anxious and excited and suddenly with plenty of time to write this newsletter.
But enough about the future. Let’s dwell, for a moment, on the recent past — specifically last Tuesday, when some coworkers gathered in a conference room to wish me well. At the Washington Post, these events are called cakings, because traditionally, the departing person’s boss provides a cake.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve got nothing against a massive Costco sheet, a dense yellow cake weighed down with a thick shellacking of buttercream. But as my caking approached, I got the itch to do it up bigger. I figured if I had the guts to walk away from a perfectly good job with the outlandish claim that I was going to become a food writer, I might as well prove myself on my way out the door. So I spent most of the previous weekend assembling the components to make a massive, three-layer sheet cake, in a similar vein to my wedding cakes. I dreamed up a flavor profile — vanilla, mascarpone, blueberry, pistachio — based on the odds and ends in my fridge. I spent a full day baking, another evening icing, and voilà, I was left with a behemoth so unwieldy, I had to uber to the office with it on my lap.
Why am I sharing this? Maybe I’m advertising that if you live in the D.C. area and want to pay me to make you a cake, I’m all ears. Maybe I’m also justifying my decision to all of you. Maybe I’m staving off the next moment of panic.
My resolution for the near future, then: more cake, less panic.
slightly citrus-y focaccia bread pudding
active time: 20 minutes
total time: 1 hour, 5 minutes
There is no more satisfying bread to bake than focaccia. It’s relatively foolproof and feels like a bakery-quality treat when you’re done — but I’m usually stumped about what to do with an entire sheet pan worth, which is how much my favorite recipe yields. Enter this bread pudding.
Google “focaccia bread pudding,” and most of what you’ll find is savory: focaccia bread pudding with caramelized onions, rosemary olive bread pudding, stuff of that nature. That’s an oversight I’m here to correct. A sweet focaccia bread pudding still has a pretty high salt quotient, which makes this dessert the perfect collision of sweet and just a little bit savory, and don’t skip the almond extract, which adds a ton of depth of flavor in just a measly teaspoon. The final product is relatively light, as far as bread pudding goes, which means it’s pretty heavy but won’t leave you incapacitated.
Ingredients
800 grams of day-old focaccia bread (or another not-too-dense loaf)
2 cups heavy cream
2½ cups half and half
9 egg yolks
1 orange (preferably cara cara, but any will do)
¾ cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
vanilla ice cream
Instructions
Set your oven to 325°F and place a rack in the middle of the oven and another on the top shelf.
Toast the bread: Weigh your focaccia and tear the portion of the loaf you’re using into small, bite-sized chunks. Spread the torn bread on a baking sheet, and toast it on the middle rack for about 12 minutes, until it’s started to dry out but hasn’t yet begun to brown.
While the bread toasts, zest the orange and juice it into a liquid measure. You should wind up with roughly ½ a cup of juice.
Make the custard: Pour the juice into a large bowl. Add the zest, heavy cream, half and half and egg yolks. Whisk the mixture until it’s uniform.
Add ½ a cup of brown sugar, plus the salt, vanilla extract and almond extract to the liquid mixture. Whisk again to combine.
Assemble: Once the focaccia is toasted, transfer it to a 9x13-inch baking dish and press down firmly on the pieces to compress them slightly. Pour the custard mixture across the bread.
Once the custard is distributed throughout the baking dish, begin to press the bread down so that it submerges in the custard and begins to saturate. You will still have pieces of bread protruding above the custard, but they should be at least somewhat saturated with custard. Keep pressing down the bread for a minute or two, repeatedly saturating the top layer. Place the bread pudding in the refrigerator for an hour.
Bake: When you’re ready to bake, heat the oven to 425° F. Remove the bread pudding from the fridge and do another round of saturating the bread, pressing down across the entire pan. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of brown sugar evenly across the top of the bread pudding.
Bake the bread pudding on the middle rack of the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, until the custard is no longer runny. Switch on your broiler to high, and move the bread pudding up to the top rack, broiling for 3 to 5 minutes, keeping a close eye on the bread pudding throughout. The top of the pudding will begin to brown and caramelize, and when it’s reached a golden color, it’s done.
Eat: Let it cool for 45 minutes and serve with vanilla ice cream. To reheat, place the pan, uncovered, in an oven set to 425° F and cook for 5 to 10 minutes.
Best wishes on your new endeavor 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤️