Soup Saturday

Soup & bread. Bread & soup.

Hope you are all safe and well. In the current climate of the Covid-19 or SARS-COV-2 threat, my husband and I have been practicing social distancing. We are both still working, but before and after work and on weekends we are sticking around the house or the trails or the well worn dog walk path that we take every day. We haven’t been to the store in a week and we plan to stay away from it for as long as we can. Instead, we are challenging ourselves to use the things we have in our freezer and our pantry and get creative. Like Chopped- home edition!

Much to Matt’s dismay I decided to make soup today. Matt is a soup hater and I am a soup lover. But, what’s funny is he always likes the soup I make, I just hear about it until dinner. Then he always admits that it was good. Chopped edition- soup Saturday. We had some ham bones in the freezer that had been in there for a while and were on the verge of freezer burn and I have more dried bean (which I am always too lazy to use) than I know what to do with. Ham and bean soup, just left it on the stove all. day. long. and ta da! Now, I am sure that you all are aware of the rule about bread with soup? One must have bread with soup. I thought everyone knew that? Croutons count, rolls are fine, bread, bread- not crackers.

Glad we could clarify that. So, I decided to play around with a sourdough beer bread recipe. Because I have limited access to supplies at this time. Good thing I stocked up on flour.

Earlier this week I saw a recipe by JoytheBaker for a scallion cheddar english muffin bread- it looked amazing, so I started with that recipe as my base (by the way I find her funny and her recipes are realistic and she doesn’t always measure, like me!). Anyhow her dough is a yeasted dough. I like to do straight sourdough if I can but I was on a time frame today and I wouldn’t have been able to allow my loaf to rise enough. I added a little less than half the yeast she added, subbed in some sourdough starter for liquid, added beer, and added 1/2 her amount of buttermilk- which I actually had.

Shortening or cooking spray to grease loaf pan
parchment paper
course cornmeal- a few tablespoons
1 t yeast
1/4 c warm water
1/4 c sourdough starter, bubbly and active, fed
1 T sugar
3 c flour
1 1/2 t salt
1 t pepper
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 c chopped scallions
1 c cheddar cheese
1/2 c buttermilk
1/2 c beer
2 T olive oil

Prep your pan, grease first- I used crisco, cut your parchment to fit, lay it in, grease again, then sprinkle course cornmeal around the bottom and on sides, turn loaf pan to coat all sides like when you flour a pan. It looks like this:

Combine warm water and sourdough starter, stir, stir, stir, sprinkle yeast on top and let it get bubbly, add sugar. Let rest for 5 minutes and get your dry ingredients together.

Combine your dry ingredients in your mixer bowl. This recipes is super easy because you use the mixer to work all the dough and it keeps you from having to clean flour and sticky dough off the counter, yourself, your hair, your fingernails. We are keeping things real clean as of late. Extra clean.

Add the scallion and cheese and mix for a moment and incorporate with paddle attachment, then switch to dough hook. Go get your wet ingredients, time for them to work. No more resting. Mix the yeast mixture, buttermilk, and beer together. I put all three of those in a pyrex glass measuring cup. With your machine on low, slowly pour your your liquid mixture onto the dry ingredients, then add oil. Leave the mixer going to 5 minutes on low.

Scrape dough out of the bowl with oiled hands and transfer to loaf pan. Pat into corners. Sprinkle with course cornmeal. Cover with plastic wrap and put it somewhere warm to rise. I put it in my oven with the oven light on.

About 3 hours later I pulled it out and took off the plastic wrap just before the dough reached it. I turned my oven on to 400 and I baked it for 30 minutes. It started to brown along the corners and I took it out, could have it go a little longer but it was still yummy.