Bread Bowl Put to Good Use

So filled with lentil soup, the bread bowl made a perfect holder for my dinner. And, of course, the bowl itself was part of the meal!

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!