New Hope for Yesterday’s Pizza

Day 1: Take-out Pizza

Day 2: Pizza Pudding

Nothing has that leftovers look like the remains of last night’s pizza. And you know if you don’t eat them today, they’ll just end up getting thrown out.

But you can turn them into a lunch or highly informal supper dish if you remember that pizza is basically bread, and stale bread is ideal for bread pudding. Just replace the milk with spaghetti sauce. You can add all sorts of pizza-type flavorings, of course--olives, sausages, garlic, peppers, the heel of a hunk of cheese. Bread pudding is as much a blank slate for flavorings as is pizza itself.

This recipe presumes half a 16-inch pizza, but bread pudding is very accommodating. If you don’t have enough pizza to make seven or eight cups, fill it out with bread; that half-eaten loaf of garlic bread you got with the pizza is your prime candidate. You can use plain stale bread all by itself, without any pizza, if that’s all you have, but you’ll want to be more generous with the flavorings, particularly the cheese.

And note that this dish is one of the few ways to use “pizza bones,” those rock-hard odds and ends of discarded pizza crust. Just be sure to tear up the “bones” (and all tough, crusty parts of pizza or bread) particularly small so they’ll get well moistened.

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Pizza Pudding

Active Work Time: 15 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 65 minutes

Tear up the pizza or bread in pieces about as big as your thumb. Serve the pudding with a green salad and your dinner is complete.

6 eggs

1 (28-ounce) jar spaghetti sauce

7 or 8 cups torn-up pizza, bread or combination

Pizza topping ingredients such as olives, minced garlic, peppers or sausage, optional

Butter

8 ounces (2 cups) shredded mozzarella or Cheddar cheese

* Beat eggs and spaghetti sauce together.

* Put torn-up pizza in mixing bowl, add pizza topping ingredients to taste and mix well. Let set 15 minutes, mixing once or twice, to absorb liquid.

* Meanwhile, butter 8-inch-square baking dish. Choose second baking dish large enough to hold first, put in oven and fill 1/2 way with water. Turn on oven to 350 degrees.

* When pizza mixture has rested 15 minutes, spoon into buttered baking dish, top with cheese and put in second baking dish in oven. Bake until thoroughly set, 40 to 45 minutes.

4 servings. Each serving: 2,016 calories; 6,576 mg sodium; 381 mg cholesterol; 60 grams fat; 282 grams carbohydrates; 81 grams protein; 1.46 grams fiber.