Make Bread Sauce in Advance Recipe

My Mr loves bread sauce and seriously if I forgot the turkey at Christmas I think he'd forgive me, but if I forgot the bread sauce...well that would be another story.

My Christmas bread sauce is always made in advance and frozen in preparation for the big day. This recipe can be adjusted to taste. I love to taste the cloves but if you're not so keen on cloves you can cut it down to your own liking.

Ingredients

1 large onion cut in half

1 bay leaf

1 pint of full fat milk ( it is Christmas after all)

50g butter

8 whole black peppercorns

15-18 cloves, less if your not so keen

Freshly ground salt and pepper.

Method

Stud the onion with the cloves and then put the studded onion in a sauce pan and cover with the milk. Add the whole peppercorns, salt and a bay leaf and steadily bring it up to boiling point. Take the pan off the heat and cover, leaving it in a warm place for the flavours to infuse. Two hours or longer if possible.

Strain the sauce to remove the peppercorns etc and put them to one side and return the sauce to the pan.

Add the bread crumbles to the pan and heat on a very low heat stirring occasionally and add half of the butter.

Allow this to cool and put into the freezer container, put the onion and peppercorns on the top, to continue the infusion. This is now ready to freeze.

Remove for the freezer the evening before needed and allow the sauce to thaw. With a spoon remove onion peppercorns and bay leaf and put the sauce into a saucepan. Add the final 25g of butter and the cream and gently heat ready to serve.