Scheiterhaufen (Austrian Bread Pudding)
Serves 6 Time 60 minutes Difficulty 2/5 Ingredients 9 Steps 7
Scheiterhaufen (literally "funeral pyre" or "stake") is a type of traditional sweet dish in Austria and Southern Germany. It was mentioned for the first time in a Roman cookbook in the 1st century AD by Marcus Gravius Apicius. In 1691 it first appeared in a German cookbook under the name Güldene Schnitten (golden slices). The term Armer Ritter (poor knight) was first used in 1787 and had its breakthrough in the 19th…
Ingredients
- 17.5 oz (500 g) stale white bread
- 2 apples
- 2 peaches
- 4 tbsp (60 g) refined sugar
- 1 pinch ground cinnamon
- 2 cups (½ L) milk
- 4 eggs
- 4 tsp (20 ml) rum or a few drops of rum aroma
- 1 tbsp butter
Steps
- Wash the apples and peaches. Peel if desired. Cut into slices about ¼ inch (1 cm) thick.
- Cut the bread into slices about the size of the fruit.
- Mix the milk and eggs in a bowl. Soak the bread slices in the mixture a few seconds (longer for stale bread).
- Mix the refined sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.
- Grease an ovenproof dish. Layer bread and fruit alternately, starting and ending with bread. Sprinkle some sugar-cinnamon mixture on every layer.
- Scatter flakes of butter on top.
- Bake 45 minutes at 180°C/350°F.
Notes from the original
- This recipe is rather a guideline; you can alter it according to your taste and wishes. Generally, there is not only one recipe for Scheiterhaufen, as people in former times were forced to use what they had available.
- You can take any kind of white bread you like, stale or fresh. You can use any kind of white bread that you have on-hand, but for an extra soft Scheiterhaufen, something like the white bread used for toast yields the best result. One variation is to roast the bread in a pan with a bit of butter before layering it (in this case you would have to pour the milk-egg-rum mixture on top of your layers).
- You can use other kinds of fruit to suit your taste, but the traditional Austrian Scheiterhaufen recipe uses only apples. Plums are also a good choice, but frankly, you can use any fruit of the season. The selection above is a summer variation.
- Some cooks like to add nuts like almonds or hazelnuts to create a distinctive taste. You can also add raisins; they are often used together with apples in Austrian cuisine.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Scheiterhaufen (Austrian Bread Pudding)” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-07-11, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.