(and Bread : Round 1)
So before I get to the bread, let’s talk about soup. This one is super easy. Last weekend I seasoned a couple of pork roasts with Greek seasoning and slow roasted them – probably 4 to 6 hours at 325 degrees. One roast I shredded for sandwiches. The other I cut into cubes.
If you’re starting with an uncooked roast, you can cube it and then brown in a skillet with a couple tablespoons of oil. Then just toss it in the crockpot with a few diced carrots, a diced onion (or be lazy like me and use a handful of dehydrated onion), a can of diced tomatoes, 1/2 jar of salsa, equal parts frozen corn and green beans, a couple cups of water, beef bouillon granules, garlic, salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low 8 hours.
Once the soup was going, it was time for the bread. The directions say to take your big batch of dough out of the refrigerator and cut off about a one pound piece.
Okay, a confession. The part I was most nervous about was hacking off a hunk of dough that was about one pound. I’m just not good at eyeballing. In junior high I did the long jump, and I could never eyeball that point where I should stop running and jump. Silly, right? But that’s what you get when a computer programmer bakes.
Anyhoo, put your anal retentive tendencies aside and simply hack off a hunk of dough. Dust it with a little flour and shape it into a ball by pulling the sides down underneath of it. That will make the bottom all bunched up and bumpy, but it’s okay. It will smooth out as it rises and bakes.
Then it’s supposed to rise for 45 minutes, and a commenter yesterday pointed out that the authors’ website says to let it rise more like an hour and a half.
Me? I let it rise something like 3 hours because I went back upstairs to work and promptly forgot about the bread. But it all turned out okay.
After the rise, I dusted it with rye flour and then slashed a tic tac toe pattern in the top with a serrated knife.
A 40-minute bake in a 450 degree oven and we had this:
The family loved it, and it went perfectly with this:
The only problem? I should have made 2 loaves. One wasn’t enough for the 5 of us.
Tomorrow I’ll eyeball another hunk of my batch of dough and use it to make olive bread. Stay tuned…
Pork & Vegetable Soup
2 pounds boneless pork roast, cubed
2 tablespoons oil
3 medium carrots, diced
1 onion, diced
16-oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained
8 oz. salsa
2 cups water
1-1/2 cups frozen corn
1-1/2 cups frozen green beans
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp. beef bouillon
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
Brown pork in oil. Add to crockpot with remaining ingredients. Cover and cook on low 8 hours.
NOTES:
* I used a handful of dehydrated onion in place of the fresh onion
* I didn’t have a can of tomatoes, so I used a 16-oz jar of salsa and 2 extra cups of water instead
* I didn’t have any beef bouillon, so I just left it out and added a little extra salt
* I almost always use granulated garlic in place of fresh minced garlic because I’m lazy
* I cooked on high for 4 hours, instead of low for 8 hours.
1 year ago:
Fence
Head on over
On the farm 01.07.08
. For whatever reason, store-bought bread irritates me more than perhaps any other processed food. Not that we don’t eat plenty of it, we certainly do. But you can see why this book intrigues me. 
