The breads from soup night

Saturday we had soup night, something we've done a few times in the past where people bring soup and we have a party and eat yummy soup. This time I made a ton of bread to go with all the soup. Mostly I made bread bowls, but a few loaves as well. It was also a good experience for getting ready for the farmer's market. I split the bread making up into two days and I think I'll do that for the farmer's market as well. The day before I made the sourdough bread bowls because I've noticed that sourdough bread tastes better the next day. I also made spicy bread bowls. The jalapeno bread I made last month went over really well but I don't have a whole lot of jalapenos so I wanted to come up with a way to make spicy bread that wouldn't be so expensive or time consuming (pickling jalapenos is a process all it's own). So I went to my local co-op and bought some cayenne powder. It worked really well. My roommate also gave me some dried ghost pepper to use, which I did use half of one crumbled up. I used my normal bread recipe but just added into the flour a few good healthy shakes of the cayenne powder and the ground up dried ghost pepper. The powder worked much nicer than the jalapenos because it made the spice more even throughout the bread. With the jalapenos you would get the occasional bite that was way spicier than the rest. It was a very delayed heat too, it was almost universal that when people tried it their immediate reaction was to say it wasn't very spicy at all, a beat later go "oh there it is, yeah this does have a lot of kick to it!" It amused me at least, mostly because I had the same reaction too when I first tried it. I thought I had failed at making spicy bread at first, then the spice hit me.



My other big bread hit of the night was my bacon cheddar beer bread. I used Fat Tire for the beer (I promise I'll try another kind of beer one of these days) and fried up six thick slices of bacon (roughly chopped up) used almost a whole pound of sharp cheddar cheese (grated) and made some incredibly unhealthy but delicious bread. I used the grease from the bacon as well in place of the olive oil. In general, bacon fat in bread is very tasty. Before baking it I did rub some olive oil onto the top and then sprinkled with the remaining cheddar cheese. I made it into two bread bowls and one loaf, based on how fast it disappeared it will definitely be one of the breads I make for the farmer's market.

Bacon-cheddar beer bread

My personal favorite from the night was my tomato basil bread. I used a vodka sauce instead (I had half a jar already open in the fridge, figured I'd use it up) of the tomato basil sauce and added four leaves of fresh basil finely chopped up. It was amazingly good. I think it was the cream in the vodka sauce that added a lot to it. I make a pretty descent homemade vodka sauce for my pasta dishes that I think I might need to make for my bread sometime soon. Although the jar stuff is much cheaper than when I make it myself.

 Tomato basil bread bowls and loaf

The picture above shows my other recent discovery, personal pot pie tins make great pans for baking bread bowls. 

And last but not least of the breads I wanted to talk about, I made my apple cinnamon bread again with one improvement and as promised measurements for what I put on the inside. The improvement was that one of the apples I grated with the biggest side of the grater so that I ended up with small chunks of apple, the other I grated finely like I normally do where by the time I'm done it looks more like applesauce then grated apple. 

I lied, two improvements, from my experience making the challah and brioche bread I tried a half stick of butter melted into 1.5 cups of milk in place of oil and water. Will definitely do that again.

For the inside I did 1.5 tbsp of white sugar, 2.5 of brown sugar and 1.5 tbsp of cinnamon for each loaf. I also sprinkled a little cinnamon on top of the dough before baking it as well that I really liked. Made great french toast for the morning after the party. 

Right before rolling up the dough

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The finished loaves of apple cinnamon bread