November Daring Cooks' Challenge - Sopa Castellana

Our November Daring Cooks’ hostess was Begoña, who writes the beautiful blog, Las recetas de Marichu y las mías. Begoña is from Spain and didn’t want to go with the more common challenges of paella or gazpacho, she wanted to share with us another very popular recipe from Spain that we don’t see as often called Sopa Castellana which is a delicious bread soup!

Our hostess provided us with several delicious looking (and sounding) recipes, but the real requirements were that we make our own stock, use it to make a soup, and include a bread element. The recipes that were provided all looked delicious, but I wasn't sure if the kids would eat them, so I went pretty simple, in order to make something the family would enjoy.

I started with stock - chicken stock, to be precise.

And while the stock simmered away, I prepared a simple bread dough to make baguettes.

Once the stock was strained, I used it to make a simple chicken and corn soup. And once the baguettes were baked, I prepared my bread element - I sliced one of the baguettes into rounds and rubbed each round with a cut piece of garlic (adding a tiny garlic sliver to the top of each, as well). I then popped the rounds in the oven for about 7 minutes to toast them up a bit.

Three rounds into the bottom of each bowl, a hearty and healthy serving of soup right on top...

...and dinner was served!

My version is a bit more like... chicken soup with giant (soft-ish) croutons, but it was tasty! We always have our chicken soup with noodles, so this was a change, but it was a nice one, and everyone really liked the garlic rounds with their soup.

Thank you, Begoña, for this challenge - I hope one day to try the full, flavorful recipes that you provided, and I appreciate the opportunity to try something a little  bit different.

To see the full challenge, take a look here.

To see the other soups cooked up in the kitchen this month, check them out here.