Good Hearty Supper: Minty Pea Soup and Rustic Bread

For me, a good supper hardly gets better than a rich warming soup and some homemade bread, what more could you wish for after a long day!?

For the Soup:
700g Garden Peas
200g cream cheese, Mascarpone works really nicely
Generous handful of Mint and Basil leaves
300-500ml Vegetable stock (I just used a stock cube to keep the process quick and simple)
a few handfuls of spinach for extra health bonuses
A dollop of creme fraiche for serving
Crispy slices of Parma Ham

Method

Defrost peas, add all other ingredients and blend in a processor or with a hand blender.  Soup at its most simple. Fry the parma ham until crisp and serve each bowl with a dollop of creme fraiche and a few rashers of the ham. Perfect!

For the Bread:
700g strong white bread flour
2 tsp salt
1 7g sachet fast action yeast
450ml luke warm water

Method:

Mix the flour salt and dried yeast into a bowl,make a well and pour in the water. Mix into a soft dough, of too stick add a little more flour. Take out of the bowl and start to knead on a lightly floured work surface, stretch the dough away from you and then fold in back towards yourself and press, then rotate slightly and repeat, this means that the dough gets well stretched.
Eventually the dough will start to feel pliable and springy, at this point return to the ball and cover the top with clingfilm. Leave to rise until doubled in size, about two hours.
Press the excess air out of the risen dough, this keeps the air holes in the bread smaller and more even, you can skip this if you want a more rustic loaf. Divide the dough into two, and shape into lovely round loaves. leave the loaves on baking parchment for about an hour, and they double up in size again.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Put two trays in the oven to preheat, these will help the base of the loaves crisp up, and but a tin at the bottom of the oven too.
Slash the top of the loaves once they have finished resting, transfer to the hot trays, and tip a cup of water into the tin at the bottom of the oven to let out a burst of steam. Bake for 15 minutes, turn around and bake for a further 15. The Loaves should sound hollow when you tap them from underneath, leave them on a wire rack to cool, or if you can't wait, then crack into that lovely warm bread with lashings of butter to help mop up the soup.
This is the kind of hearty warming meal to make you smile, and feel you have achieved something quite therapeutic when you have two golden loaves to share at the end. Bread needn't be as daunting as it seems to make!

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