Cheese and Ham Herb Bread / Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Can you feel it?? There is a slight nip in the early morning air and at night. Winter's round the corner and you know what that means .. milder temperatures, increased appetites and loads of baking!! After months of erratic baking, I see a busy few months on this blog. Soups, cakes, cookies, stews and warm puddings.. .. I want to make it all this winter!!

 

 

But for today, we'll start slowly with a soup. In deference to the pumpkin craze all this month on blog-o-sphere, I decided that my first soup of the season should be a roasted pumpkin soup. If you are looking for a fuss-free recipe that is full of flavour, you turn to Donna Hay.

 

The pumpkin is roasted along with an onion and a couple of garlic cloves. The best part, there is no peeling and chopping involved. You roast the veggies, just as they are, with a drizzle of oil. Once they are roasted, you simply peel off the skin and blitz it all and then add some chicken stock, milk and a teeny bit of honey. That's all there is to it!! Now, you know why I chose this recipe.

 

 

To go along with the soup, I made this bread. The recipe uses no yeast. So, anyone out there who's had a difficult relationship with yeast, this is for you!! It is bread speckled with ham, cheese, mustard and herbs... perfect with a soup.

 

Except for roasting the veggies that took an hour, making the soup and baking the bread, took a little over an hour. The soup is such a beautiful celebration of the vegetables involved. Roasting them heightens their flavour and brings out their natural sweetness. You balance the flavours and texture with some chicken stock and milk. We were won over!!

 

 

Since no yeast is used, the bread has a more denser and tightly packed crumb than usual. But, the flavours are all there and you will taste each and every component...the ham, cheese, herbs, the mustard.. all of it!! And did I mention, it also uses whole wheat flour.

 

The two dishes are wholesome and complement each other. In fact, keep the bread in mind for any soup you might have in mind. Sounds like just 'soup and bread', but it is a complete meal.

 

 

Winter is so gentle out here, that it brings a spring in my step and a smile on my face. What about you.. how's winter looking in your part of the world??

 

Cranberry-Walnut-Pumpkin Loaf : "TWD : Baking with Julia"

Although America has a grand tradition of baking with pumpkin around this time of the year, the idea has never really appealed to me. It's not that we don't get pumpkins in India. Oh we do and plenty of it!! Drive through the rural countryside and you will see them growing on a vine along the roofs of people's homes!! But it's largely cooked as a savoury dish and for someone who till very recently thought about baking only in terms of chocolate, the very idea of pumpkin in a cake was a bit off-putting, to be honest.

But lately, I have been intrigued ... I have seen pumpkin pies, muffins, cheesecakes, candy, bread, cake on every other blog I've been to in the past two weeks ...I've read the recipes, gawked at the photographs and finally, told myself 'the time has come'!! So, this week's 'TWD:Baking with Julia' choice of recipe, Cranberry-Walnut-Pumpkin Loaf, could not have come at a more opportune time!!

 

The recipe is a yeasted bread dough that has roasted pumpkin puree, egg, toasted walnuts, raisins and cranberries (I used dried ones) added to it. Much like the brioche dough that we used for these buns, the dough is kept overnight in the refrigerator after one rise and before it is rolled into shape for the second rise.

 

This is an extremely sticky and wet dough to work with but apart from that there is nothing difficult about this recipe. However, with all the waiting required, it does take almost a day to make from the time you first start.

 

The dough rises beautifully and because of the presence of the egg, it bakes into a beautiful golden-brown crust, complete with some of the cranberries peeking out from the top. It helps that with the cinnamon and nutmeg present in the dough, your kitchen smells beautiful!!

 

As for the taste, no, you do not taste the pumpkin. My question.. is that normal, for when you bake with pumpkin?? Is it just there for texture and volume and not so much for flavour??? But apart for that, this bread is along the lines of a sweet fruit bread. With the toasted nuts, sweet raisins, tangy cranberries and cinnamon, it begins to evoke the flavours of Christmas, just a teeny bit!! You can have a slice of it plain or lightly toasted. We preferred the latter option!!

 

My issue with this bread is not so much with the recipe. It is more to do with the fact that with the same flavour combinations, instead of a yeasted dough, this could have been made along the lines of a 'quick bread'. The texture would have been more cake-like, saved us a lot of time and it would have still tasted just as good. In fact, I've seen recipes where orange juice has been added to a similar quick bread .. now, how good would that have been??? Just a thought....