Making Bread Bowls for Lentil Soup

My youngest daughter comes over for dinner on most Sunday nights. Tomorrow night we are having lentil soup and I got inspired to bake bread bowls in which to serve it.

I found a recipe in Dough: Simple Contemporary Bread by Richard Bertinet.

This recipe comes from his olive dough section.

Preheat the oven to 475.

• Put 3 3/4 cups bread flour plus 2 T semolina flour in the large mixing bowl.
• Using your hands, rub in the yeast (1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast).
• Turn the mixer onto slow speed and add 2 tsp of salt, 5 T olive oil and 12 fluid oz. of water.
• Mix for 2 minutes on the slowest speed.
• Then up the speed one notch and mix for 6 minutes with the dough hook.
• Remove the dough from the mixer and shape it into a ball.
• Put it into a lightly floured bowl to rest for 30 minutes. Cover the bowl with a lint-free cloth towel.
  

Take out 8 oven-proof soup bowls (about 5 inches in diameter). Grease the outside of the bowls with olive oil and turn upside down on a baking sheet. After the rest time for the dough, divide the dough into 8 parts, roll each part into a circle and fit it over the upturned soup bowl.



Bake for 25 minutes.



Cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes. Then use a thin-bladed knife to loosen the bread from the bowl.



Cool on the rack until completely cool.



I'll post a picture tomorrow of the soup-filled bread bowl.

Addendum: I discovered that the bowls do not stay round unless they are stored on their bottoms. I put several in a Ziploc on their sides and they became oval bowls for my next soup meal!