soup and bread recipe requests

[antifrenzy]

Okay, so now that the weather conditions in my little corner of the world (Ellensburg, WA) have reached epic cold proportions, I'm searching for a few stew/soup recipes. I have a few requirements. The recipe needs to be

Comments

[diarytypething]

If you're trying to make a creamy soup, but don't want to add soya, put in a potato or two when you cook the vegetables in the stock, then put the whole lot through the blender. I've tried this with carrot and coriander (some carrots, onion, garlic and a potato with coriander, cumin and black pepper) and spicy cauliflower (a cauliflower, two medium carrots, a potato half and onion and some curry spices). If you liquidise soups with red lentils in them, they often go quite creamy too. Usually I just improvise recipes, but from experience I'd probably say that anything that's been put through the blender will usually freeze well because there aren't any vegetable chunks to go mushy from over-cooking.

If you're looking for something really filling it might be worth trying some recipes that involve grains, such as rice (I've heard of rice being pureed to make soup more creamy too, but never tried it myself) or barley - one of my favourites is a veggie version of Scotch broth, which can sometimes be so thick that you can spread it on the bread instead of dipping the bread in, although it seems that this kind of soup doesn't appeal so much to people who didn't grow up eating it.

You can sometimes find easy bread recipes on the back of yeast packets, where they at least tell you the ratio of flour to wheat to use, then all you have to do is add enough warm water to knead it into a dough (don't worry about measuring it because how much water depends on the variety of flour and even things like air pressure and humidity), let it rise and punch it down (repeat if you want), add seeds and leave it in the tin/shape you're baking it in to prove (rise for the last time) before putting it in the oven. I apologise if I'm being patronising with this, but I don't know how much you know about breadmaking and even if you've done it before, this might be read by someone else who hasn't. Two sort of general tips that I've found useful are to put a small ball of dough next to the loaf in a glass of water when you're proving it and when the dough starts to float in the water, then you know it's ready to go in the oven, and if you spray the crust with water when it's almost cooked it makes it really crispy. Generally, wheat flour is quite forgiving, but other things like spelt and rye can go wonky if you knead them too much or leave them to rise for too long.

[antifrenzy]

Wow, your comments are very helpful. Thanks so much for your time!