Hubby’s Homemade Dinnner

After all the years I have cooked, I love it when Hubby decides he is going to cook a meal. He loves making me breakfast and once in a while he makes dinner. Last night was one of those nights. He asked me to look at his recipes the day before and make sure we had everything he needed. We needed bread flour because I was low. So I picked up 5 pounds on the way home from the dentist yesterday.

He made homemade tomato soup which he has been making for years. It is so good and so much better than tomato soup in a can. The pic above shows when it just started to cook. He simmered it for a while and just before we ate, he added leftover elbow macaroni from a prior meal this week. It was so delicious. After dinner, he bagged some up and froze it for future meals. The rest will be our lunches for the next couple of days.

Here is the soup after it cooked and the macaroni was added. The only changes that Hubby makes to the recipe is to add Italian seasoning spice and leave out the leeks which he does not like. 

Hubby decided that he would make homemade Ciabatta Bread to go with it. He made it by hand. He made two separate loaves on two different sheet pans. Here is one of them while it was rising. The recipe told him to lightly flour them. He did but we couldn’t figure out why. All it did was make the loaf a little flour-y. But it easily wiped off so that we could eat it. Perhaps you experienced bread makers can tell us why it said to do that.

Here is one of the loaves after it was baked and cooling. He just wiped off the flour on the outside before we ate it. He also added some rosemary to the top of the loaf before he baked it. This recipe is definitely a keeper. We loved this as you can see with our soup. 

The bread was still warm and with butter it was scrumptious. It was a very enjoyable meal made for under $1.00 per serving. We will definitely be making this once a month all winter.

Hubby was thrilled with the way his bread turned out. We ate about half a loaf so we have a loaf and a half left. I save my bread bags and twist ties for when I make bread in my bread maker. At first I thought we would freeze one loaf but on second thought I was sure that we eat it this weekend. I bet it will make great toast for our family breakfast on Sunday. 

Here is the recipe for the Ciabatta Bread . And here is the recipe for the Tomato Soup . 

I had so many doctor and dentist appointments this week that I have only had time to post twice. So I will be doing our frugal things list that I haven’t done in a while tomorrow.

Do any of you have great homemade bread recipes that you use? Would you share them with Hubby?