Budín de Pan is a tender, creamy bread pudding with crunchy edges. Spiced with cinnamon, clove, and soaked in caramel sauce. The combination is pure comfort food!

Budín de Pan

This is one of my favorite Puerto Rican desserts! Budín is also popular in other Hispanic cultures, such as Mexican and Dominican cuisine.

You’ll often find delicious flavor variations such as pumpkin or coconut as well!

I also have a recipe for American-style classic bread pudding. This one is richer with a white chocolate glaze and doesn’t have any of the spices.

Budín is very easy to make, but there are three components you need to prepare. It helps if you’re organized in advance.

Also, for the perfect budín you’ll need to make this the day before. It tastes even better after it’s had a chance to meld in the refrigerator overnight!

Step 1: get your pans ready

To ensure the budín cooks evenly and is nice and creamy inside, it needs to cook in a water bath (baño de maria).

You’ll put the budín dish inside a larger dish and then fill up the larger pan with hot water.

Step 2: make the budín de pan

Using day old (or older) bread is best. If the bread is dry it can soak up more of the custard mixture.

French bread or pan de agua is typical for budín. You can also use white bread or any bread or buns you want to use up.

If you want a super smooth bread pudding you can remove the crusts. It’s personal preference; I leave them on.

Raisins are usually part of traditional budín, but I do not like them so I leave them out. If I’m cooking this for a crowd, I always add them.

Step 3: prepare the caramel

This syrup is just like making caramel for a flan de coco. It goes in the bottom of the pan and the bottom gets caramelized like pineapple upside down cake.

It’s simple to make with water and sugar. I like to infuse mine with whole cloves for extra flavor!

While easy to prepare, it needs to be watched at all times since it can quickly go from golden amber to burnt black in seconds.

For this reason, I prefer the microwave method, which is listed below. Check out the instructions in my flan de queso recipe if you want to prepare on the stovetop.

If you do not want caramel sauce, you can omit this step. The budín can be cooked without it and tastes delicious “plain.”

Or, top with ice cream, whipped cream, jarred caramel sauce or a drizzle of honey.

These are the three components of the best budín de pan.

The caramel goes in the bottom of the dish, the bread pudding goes over the caramel. The whole dessert is cooked in a water bath.

You’ll then need to cool the budín before refrigerating. You can dig in right away, but it tastes even better if it has a chance to chill.

It’s best served at room temperature or warmed up a little, so there’s a lot of waiting around before it can be devoured.

However, most of the time spent is not active, hands on time, so you can be doing other things.

I promise it’s worth the wait!