One of my favourite foods at Disney's California Adventure - and one of the few I'm willing to pay for - is the broccoli and cheese soup in a sourdough bread bowl. I was lucky enough to find a really good soup recipe which emulates the soup well enough, with some modifications (half chicken broth, cheese added last) so all I needed was a bread bowl. I decided to follow along with the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and their first recipe for Boule. Unfortunately I severely underestimated the amount of dough needed for a single bread bowl, but it was good none-the-less.
Recipe
- 3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour (I substituted half of this for bread flour, cutting back on the total flour by about 1/4 of a cup)
Combine yeast, salt, and water in a large mixing bowl.
Mix in all the flour at once, stirring until mixture is uniform.
Let rise for 2-3 hours with a non-airtight lid.
Pull off a chunk of dough to be shaped, the recipe calls for a 1 pound ball about the size of a grapefruit. Cover with enough flour so it won't stick to your hands and stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides of the ball.
Let the ball rest for 30-40 minutes on a cornmeal dusted pizza peal (I just put it on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet). Preheat oven to 450F with a broiler tray for holding water.
Dust the ball with flour and do fancy slashes or whatever on it with a serrated knife. Pop it in the oven until the crust is nicely browned, recipe calls for 30 minutes, I did 20-25 since my oven gets a bit hotter then expected. Pour 1 cup hot water into the broiler tray before closing the oven.
Let cool, store the rest of the dough in the fridge for up to 14 days.
I still have to work on my shaping (one of the bowls turned out to be more of a boat) but all in all the bread turned out great: a great crust and a nice chewy crumb.
Bread as a container is never a bad idea. I think the Duke of Wellington was on to something!
Oh man, I've always wanted to make Beef Wellington, hopefully I'll get to do it this fall sometime.
You first, then let me know how it goes and I'll give it a whirl.
Coincidentally, today I had my first broccoli cheddar soup bread bowl in a couple of years. Unfortunately it was Panera, not made by forwardslash. The bread bowl is a magnificent invention. These look delicious. I almost wrote a post inspired by Panera today. It had to do with a banner with a picture of some tomatoes that read: "Summer Fresh". -The thought occurred to me that a quality non-chain restaurant would never have such a banner, no matter how fresh their tomatoes. It was a purely corporate item. I'm sure it must help, or at least has little negative impact, and they believe it helps, but it is the essence of the corporate consumption experience. "Summer Fresh" -yeah, maybe. Sorry to hijack your bread bowls, forwardslash. It was just a weird coincidence. Btw, the best bread bowl I ever had was a clam chowder in San Fran at Fisherman's Wharf. It was cool and rainy, which added to the flavor, I am sure. Btw, how do you core the bread?
My wife's favourite bread bowl is also clam chowder, though at the Pacific Wharf in California Adventure (there aren't many places with bread bowls around here unfortunately.) Coring the bread is really easy, actually, I just have a short serrated knife which came with our knife block. I cut in a circle at a slight inward angle and it just glides through. On a side note, I can't tell you how awesome it is to have a fully functioning kitchen (now with kitchen island). For years my wife and I hung out at her place (in her mother's basement suite) which was under renovations constantly. For a while we didn't have any kitchen or shower as everything was torn out except for the toilet. Now we can actually cook a full meal together and not have to eat on the couch!