Made It: Fast Bread

So, along with our plans for careful budgeting and using every bit of what we have, we've also started to eat a bit less meat around here.  Don't get me wrong, we're pretty strong meatatarians, I just figure we don't have to eat meat at every single meal.  Or maybe the meat can be more on the sidelines, rather than the main event.  We just don't need all that meat protein, and meat can be pretty pricey. 

Following this, I decided to make soup from our homemade chicken stock from the weekend's chicken dinner.  What's in the fridge?  Carrots.  Lots of carrots.  And half a yam.  I found a recipe in my soup cookbook for a curried carrot apple soup, and figured that the yam could be snuck (sneaked?) in there without too many heads turning. 

But what takes a simple creamy soup from decent to Amazing Meal is the FRESH BAKED BREAD you serve it with!!  Generally Dave is the bread baker around here, and I have only recently begun my bread journey with his excellent ciabatta recipe.  But that's like a full day recipe - 2 days if you start the starter the night before.  And I am habitually a late starter at stuff.  It's already 3pm and I don't know what we're eating tonight... 

The point of all this is, I needed a recipe for fast bread.  Something you can put together while currying the carrots for the soup and playing outside with Charlie.  This recipe definitely fit the bill.  Almost perfect for the novice bread baker as well, as it didn't really require too much kneading or special skill. 

*I will admit, however, that as I was finishing up the bread to bake, Dave came home and helped me make it look beautiful like this.  Apparently the technique is called "rounding" - don't just bake the loaf the way they tell you to do it.  Tuck the ends under and kind of round it out, sort of rolling it like a ball sideways.  Then, just before you bake, make the cuts in the top. Beauteous!

We served up the bread alongside our curried soup with some sliced tomatoes, a few little bocconcini bites, and some liver pate to make it interesting.  All in all, a lovely meal!