 |
| The finished bread bowl in all it's glory |
On Halloween, Jake and I decided to take Luck for a walk on the opposite side of town, on a path that runs right alongside the coast. Although Santa Cruz is a small town, it is rare to see someone I know when walking this particular walk, and I felt much like a tourist, taking in all the unfamiliar sights, smells, and sounds. Jake and I have a tendency to talk about food when we are walking and some of our best culinary ideas have been born this way. It was a chilly fall day, one of those days in October when you can feel the crisp soon-to-be-winter chill running through your blood. This kind of weather flips a switch in me, and I almost always want to have my idea of a perfect meal for dinner; soup sprinkled with cheese and a crusty bread to sop it all up with. I had decided I wanted to make a lentil/bean soup, something hearty and warm and then somehow the topic changed to bread bowls. Maybe it was the combination of the seagulls swarming, the cold wind, and the feeling like a tourist that reminded me of getting a bread bowl on Pier 39 in San Francisco as a child. Whenever we would go out to restaurants for dinner, I would almost always get the soup of the day. I always hoped it would be clam chowder, which was my favorite, although I never ate the clams. I mentioned to Jake that a bread bowl would be the perfect thing to have for dinner with our lentil bean soup and started to talk absentmindedly about buying a round loaf and making bowls for us for dinner. Then Jake reminded me of the fact that I am exploring the world of bread making and suggested that I try making it myself.
*
We discussed what would make a good bread bowl, what qualities the bread itself would need to have, and what kind of soup or stew would work in a bread bowl. We knew that the lentil/bean soup would be thick enough and would work nicely in a bread bowl, but we needed to put some thought into the bread bowl itself. The bread would have to be tight on the inside with no large air pockets, it would have to be sturdy and would have to be baked in a round boule shape. I figured using a bread recipe that I had already made several times would be a good idea and that I could alter the recipe a little to make it more solid by adding more flour and baking it a little longer. I decided to use the French Baguette recipe that I have made many times from the book, French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano. After figuring out the logistics of the bread bowl, Jake and I started imagining all of the wonderful creations we could make with bread bowls, the unexpected and expected pairings of bread to fillings, bread bowls for every meal including dessert, and the different types of bread we could use for different desired effects. I couldn’t wait to get home to try it out especially because at this point my toes, nose and ears were completely numb.
*
I immediately started the bread bowl when we got home, eating Sour Patch Kids, Lemon Heads, and Red Hots until I had developed sores on my sour taste buds. The French Baguette recipe is fairly simple, and I think it was the first bread I had ever attempted to make. The baguettes are a little bland and somewhat sturdy, so I knew they would work perfectly. I made two batches of dough, because I was worried the bowls wouldn’t be deep enough. Once I pulled them out of the oven, they looked like a bread bowl that even Andre the Giant couldn’t finish (R.I.P.). We made the best of it and ate as much as we could while watching Beetle Juice which I had purchased that day for $8 in the bargain bin at Blockbuster. Overall, I think that the bread bowls turned out pretty well and were surprisingly very simple to make. Next time, I will make a regular batch of dough so that I don’t have to skip two meals the next day. The best part of this whole experience was that the concept of making bread bowls brought up so many different recipes that I would like to try; caramelized fruit in a sweet brioche bowl, mixed green salad with vinaigrette in a sourdough bowl, pumpkin soup in a rye bread bowl. I think this winter is going to be a creative one full of bread bowls of every kind.
 |
