Soup and Bread Cookbook

Title: Soup and Bread Cookbook

Author: Beatrice Ojakangas

Publisher: Rodale Books

Genre: Cookbook; Soup and Bread

Rating:

Synopsis:
The cookbook looked really good. It starts with simple homemade broths and a glossary about "bread-baking basics". These are both important for a good soup. The entire thing starts off with two simple recipes- baguette and basic home-baked bread. Then goes on to divide the rest of the recipes into seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. It was nice to see which ones would be appropriate in each of the seasons. They had some fabulous sounding soups in all of them.

My family made two of the soups in the book: the 10-minute Chickpea Tomato Soup and the German Potato soup in a Pumpernickel Soup Bowl.

The 10-Minute Chickpea Tomato Soup  was blander than bland. It had absolutely no taste. It did take only 10 minutes to make, which I guess is a good thing, but my family did not want to eat it (so I guess if you want to go on a diet, this could be a good soup to make). There was way too much lemon so it was overpowering all of the other ingredients. Maybe if I had had time to make the "parmesan & herb-toasted baguette toasts" that went along with it, it would have been better, but I doubt it. I was surprised the soup didn't turn out, I mean how can you go wrong with chickpeas, garlic, tomatoes, and spices?!

The German Potato soup in a Pumpernickel Soup Bowl was interesting. It tasted good, but I think it would have been better without the cooked corned beef (since it didn't add anything, no taste or anything) and I think it would have been nicer if it had been pureed potato instead of whole. I wasn't able to make the pumpernickel at home and so had to buy some pumpernickel in order to have it as a side. It was nice to dip into the soup. I would make this soup again, but next time I am omitting the corned beef and pureeing the potato.

Overall, the cookbook was okay. It had some really good looking soups, but the two that we made seemed to fall short of any taste. The entire book also fell short on photos. I love being able to flip through a cookbook and see what a recipe looks like (or what it is supposed to look like) before I make it. This cookbook didn't allow me to do that.