Snow Days Are For Soup (and Bread)!
With the nearly two feet of snow last week we had a couple days at home. Nothing seems like better comfort food on days like that than a nice bowl of hot soup, unless of course it is accompanied by a loaf of freshly baked bread! I hit the store shortly before the storm hit and re-stocked the pantry with soup essentials for a couple different kinds. I kept finding myself drawn to the white navy beans so I threw together a Tuscan-inspired soup with onion, garlic, carrots, celery, fresh rosemary, and pinches of marjoram, basil and thyme.
The first meal of this soup we ate, I ladled the piping hot soup over coarsely chopped kale, though I found the kale this time of year could have used a bit of steaming or to have cooked in the soup pot. I’ll probably opt for baby spinach this time of year as we aren’t fans of reheated greens so I’m loathe to add them direct to the soup pot. Each bowl was topped with a dusting of freshly grated parmesan cheese and fresh cracked black pepper (yes, I *love* my black pepper) before serving.
I served the soup with freshly baked bread made once again from a batch of dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
. Normally one is not supposed to cut into bread that is still warm as it tends to cause the crumb to go gummy but sometimes it is nice to just not care and enjoy it warm from the oven. Since this dough makes multiple loaves and the loaf size can vary somewhat I just made sure to bake only what I knew we’d eat with our soup and it was perfect!
I have found my bread results from this book have varied quite widely, even from the same batch of dough. I know for certain the different batches of dough were significantly different - my first batch was likely too moist as the loaves tended to spread more than rise very much, but the last loaf from that dough had fantastic crumb that I just loved. The second batch I mixed stiffer and drier, but I think I ultimately need to strike a balance between the two. Everything I’ve made has been great, I was just surprised at the variety of outcomes from the same batch of dough. This week we even made pizzas with the dough and it worked great (except when I dropped one of the crusts on the floor anyway - I’ll need to practice forming pizza as that is normally Drew’s job).
