My Winter of Soup and Bread

I’ve been on quite a soup and bread kick lately. Over the years I’ve made a lot of chili, perfecting the recipe to suit me and Mark along the way, and a ton of tomato soup because my mother-in-law has an amazing recipe. But other than that, I haven’t ventured into the homemade soup world. I decided to make that a project for this fall and winter. So far so good—last week we had potato soup and this week, chicken and rice, and they turned out pretty okay. I can tweak things with each recipe for next time. Seems like there’s never enough broth, so I’ll work on that. But I’m most excited about the breads. I’ve been making homemade rolls at least once a week since the summer, so those are good to go, but last week I tried homemade Italian bread and it actually worked. The bread machine is half the battle, because I’m not really crazy about kneading. I made it again last night for our chicken soup and it was delicious. It feels so authentic with the hard crust, chewy inside, and even cornmeal on the bottom. My next experiment will be tomato basil bread. I found a recipe online and I’d love to have some to make grilled cheese with for our tomato soup—yummo! Just thought I’d share because these are big accomplishments for me. The picture above is our Italian bread from last night.