Creole Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

Bread pudding has been synonymous with New Orleans for at least two centuries, and I still consider the classic one with whiskey sauce served at the Bon Ton Café to be the finest in the city. At one point, chopped dried fruits were also added to the pudding, suggesting that the dessert’s origins were not French Creole but, somehow, English. The pudding can certainly be made with day-old commercial white bread, but it does make all the difference in texture if you use a homemade, crusty coun