Sometimes you have to just laugh.  I mean, you are testing out recipes and you think, what we really need here is a lovely french bread.  Soft, but flavorful, with a little chew and a decent enough crust.  You are not necessarily looking to have an artisan-style full of glorious holes and a crisp crust.  No, but something delicious never the less.  And you stumble across a recipe and you think, this is it.  It has to be.  The dough has a wonderful feel as you work it, it looks gorgeous in your new linen rising cloths.  You get your slashes done perfectly on top with your new lame and you bake it.  6 hours later.  And you have somehow managed to recreate a giant torpedo of bread that is almost identical to the loaves you can get at any grocery store for .99 cents.  Wait, what?  Yep.  Sometimes in the kitchen, you win some and sometimes you lose some.  This definitely felt like the later.  I ended up with two loaves of giant, squishy, mediocrely flavored grocery store bread.  It is the mass-produced marshmallow of bread. Hmmm.

When the chips, or crumbs as in this case, are down, there is someone who is always, always, enthusiastically in my corner.  Hi mom.  I was sure I could count on her, but she even chuckled a little and made a joke about the bread.  But then tried to make me feel better by saying my kids seemed to like it and she was sure it would be good for a huge submarine sandwich, or any number of other things. She was right (I put it in writing mom!).  I knew it would be good for something, and instantly, I knew who my giveaway was going to.  That it happened to be the week before Mother’s Day too?  Stop it!  It is too perfect.

But, I couldn’t give my mom lame bread.  A woman who raised me, began and encouraged my love of cooking, and is a stalwart believer in no waste (seriously, just ask her, pretty much anything can be frozen for a later use).  It came to me quickly too, just what “bread” gift I would give her too.  Bread pudding.  It was my favorite dessert growing up, and to this day remains the ultimate in nursery comfort cold out of the refrigerator for breakfast.  My mom used to make it for my sister and me when we were little, and I still remember the huge baking dish she cooked it in and how sad I was when it was nearing empty.

Bread pudding has always been about ingenuity.  Like most fantastic home-style dishes, this one is all about not wasting ingredients and making the very best from a less than ideal situation.  Kind of like moms, or at least my mom.  As I mentioned above, she is unapologetically in my corner.  She sincerely loves her grandchildren but does not hesitate to throw them some shade if they are giving me too rough of a time–that is how in my corner she is.  As a mom, she has made her fair share of lemonade or bread pudding. As in, taking a situation that didn’t turn out right and turning it into something better.  And just like her suggestion about the submarine sandwich, or taking stale bread and turning it into a feast, my mom has given me a gift I will always treasure.  A desire, a need really, to make the best of anything, and to never stop trying to turn things around.  Thank you so much, mom!

So in honor of life giving you mediocre bread sometimes, in honor of food ingenuity and a mom’s unconditional love, and in honor of my mom who will never, ever stop trying to see the positive, Happy Mother’s Day.  Now go make bread pudding for someone you love.