Steamy

We stopped by the bakery today looking for day-old breads so our guests could make a dish they call a "Panade". We normally bake our own breads but we would have had to do it yesterday to make it day-old and we didn't get around to it after the adventure...

It was so cold outside and so warm in the bakery that all the windows were beautifully fogged...and, when I stepped inside, my lens was too! Another almost completely untweaked blip accomplished (even more "less tweaked" than yesterday's).

The panade was a base of day old crusty bread cut into large ~1 inch cubes, topped with a layer of simmered-down leeks and greens of all sorts (we used spinach, kale, and chard), topped with a layer of gruyere or other cheese , filled up with about 3 cups of scalded milk and baked at a low temperature for "as long as you feel like it". I would like to try it again with more ingredients and maybe next time, some bacon!

*EDIT: Since many of you mentioned trying the recipe, I thought I'd give some more specific instructions. You want the bread to be a crusty rustic kind of loaf and let it get a little stale. You can cut it into pieces the night before and leave them out. Or, since we bought our last minute, you can toast them in the oven a bit until they are a bit crunchier, like large croutons. Separately, put the leeks and chopped up greens into a pan (preferably with a lid) and saute them until they soften and cook down. This receipe is a bit of a "fridge cleaner" so you can throw in anything you have that you need to use or think would taste good. I think mushrooms would be delicious. Grate the cheese. We buttered the bottom and sides of our pan and layered all the bread on the bottom. Then, we layered in the greens, then we topped with the grated cheese and poured in the scalded milk. You can bake at a low temperature (250F) for anywhere for 2-5 hours. The more you cook it, the more of a bread pudding consistency it will take on. If you're impatient, you can always pull it out and eat it there will just still be more texture to the bread.