So halloween is coming up, and there are pumpkins everywhere! We love to carve them but hate how wasteful it is to just through away all the pumpkin you scoop out, so this year we used our pumpkin to make some soup. And you can’t have soup without bread.
So after meticulously scouring the internet and settling upon the perfect designs for our pumpkins, we got round to some baking! This soup and bread a simple but delicious and a nice warming meal for these cold months. We added pesto to our bread to give a green tint (green = as close to a halloween theme as we could get) and also because pesto tastes great. You could also try using red pesto instead of green to give your bread a subtle tomatoey flavour.
- 400g strong white bread flour
- 7g instant yeast (1 sachet)
- 8g salt
- 25g butter
- 250ml water
- 100g green pesto
- Place the flour, salt and yeast into a large bowl or stand mixer with the dough hook attachment.
- Add the butter and 3/4 of the water and mix until the dough starts to come together.
- Slowly add the rest of the water until all of the flour has come off the sides of the bowl and you have a rough dough.
- Knead for 10 mins on an oiled surface (not floured) until you have a soft smooth dough.
- Place in a large oiled bowl and cover with cling film or a damp tea towel and leave to prove for an hour or until doubled in size.
- Tip your dough out and spread out to a large rectangle. Spread the pesto over the whole of the rectangle and roll from the long side into a sausage. Cut this in half and twist the 2 halves together then place it into your loaf tin.
- Prove for another hour in the tin.
- Preheat the oven to 220°C.
- Bake for 30 mins or until the bread is cooked through and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
We used all the insides we scooped out of the pumpkins to make some pumpkin stock which formed the base of the soup. To make the stock we just popped all the pumpkin in a pan, topped it up with water and added a vegetable stock cube and just let it simmer away for an hour or 2. Then allowed it cool and strained it before adding it to our soup. You can just use vegetable stock in the soup if you like and it will make a nice sweet potato soup. The soup makes dealing with all the pumpkin goop worth it (we promise).
- 1kg sweet potato
- 1l pumpkin stock
- 1 onion finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 chicken (or vegetable) stock cube
- salt and pepper
- tbsp olive oil
- Peel and chop the sweet potato into small pieces, drizzle with olive oil and coat with the cumin and a little salt and pepper. Spread out on a baking tray and cook for 30 mins.
- Add the onion and garlic to a large pan with a little olive oil and allow to soften for 2-3 mins.
- Then add the roasted sweet potato, pumpkin stock and chicken stock cube.
- Let simmer for 30 mins then blend.
- Season to taste with salt, pepper and cumin.
In our soup we used a chicken stock cube, just because we find they have a nicer flavour but if you’re vegetarian just stick to a vegetable one! Your soup will still be delicious.
