The Soup & Bread Cookbook - excellent 5 stars

The Soup & Bread Cookbook: More Than 100 Seasonal Pairings for Simple, Satisfying Meals by Beatrice Ojakangas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am one of those nerds who like to read cookbooks. For me, the thing that constitutes a cookbook that is fun to read is a bit of history, a bit of narrative, some instruction, and great recipes. This cookbook fell a little short on those counts and wasn't a great read, but the recipes turned out really fabulously.

Ojakangas built this book with soup and an accompanying bread to go with it, so the net result was that there were an equal number of soup and bread recipes. I made a few recipes from the book, but I'll discuss just two of them here.

By now, those who read my reviews know that I love to make bread... not the super easy way. I've been experimenting with some fairly complicated artisan breads. So what ended up being outstanding bread from this book? A simple Amish White Bread recipe and Old Fashioned Cream Scones. The bread came out with a fine moist crumb and the cream scones were beautiful and went fast. Both recipes were family favorites and didn't last long.

Overall, this was an excellent cookbook with recipes that were as tasty as they looked in the book.

Old-Fashioned Cream Scones - I used my food processor to make these and followed the instructions to a T and these came out with a subtle sweetness. Perfect with morning coffee, or tea.

Amish White Bread - this was supposed to make just one loaf, but as you can see, the one loaf rose to the size of two loaves (I used my bread machine for the dough, which may be the reason). Next time I'll split it between two loaf pans. What did I do with the giant loaf? I cut the top section off and ended up with two loaves of bread that was so good that not a single crumb was wasted.

I would post the recipes, but I'm pretty sure there would be some copyright infringement issue. You'll have to buy the book or get it from your library.



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So I spent my entire day in the kitchen

This is a copy of a post that I put on my genealogy blog:

It all started with a tiny 250 year old sourdough starter that I ordered from King Arthur Flour. Of course baking bread every weekend, I was up for the challenge of sourdough. My starter came in a tiny jar and was a little more than 2 TB of starter that resembled silly putty. Of course, I followed the directions over the course of a couple days and had the most beautiful doughy starter.

So, today was sourdough bread day and pumpkin roll for a birthday wish cake by my daughter's boyfriend. First, sourdough takes many hours and the starter was being fed for days, but I finally had a beautiful oatmeal wheat sourdough bread rising (I completely changed the base recipe).

 

Of course we also needed dinner rolls for Sunday dinner, of course I had to try another recipe from King Arthur Flour for Buttery Sourdough Buns (below). I didn't alter the recipe at all on this one except to leave out the paprika and add sesame seeds to the top. By the way, delicious.

 

 

Of course there was still a pumpkin roll to be made....

 

 

... and I just couldn't throw out the remainder of the pumpkin, so I made pumpkin bread.

 

 

After I spent hours in the kitchen and my feet were hurting, I started thinking.... 100 years ago you couldn't just run off to the supermarket to buy bread. Every day, our ancestors worked even harder than I did today, making bread every or every other day. And they didn't waste a thing. Stale bread became bread pudding or stuffing, or some other treat that would use up every bit of precious bread that was slaved over daily. Also, they didn't have the convenience of dry yeast that we have today, so they very likely kept a bit of sourdough starter growing all the time. Hence, my 250 year old sourdough starter.

 

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I'll be posting these recipes here on the blog after everything has been taste tested.