Potato-Mushroom Soup in Bread (Bread Recipe Included)

Winter's gone but we still have one week of cold weather coming. It's a perfect time to enjoy our typical cold-weather meals before their season is definitely over. Potato-mushroom soup or bramboračka is a traditional Czech soup and fancy restaurants sometimes serve it in a small loaf of bread.

And I'll show you not only how to make the soup but also how to make a perfect buttermilk loaf to serve the soup in. At the end I'll also give you some alternatives like gluten-free or with a little spring twist...

I also made this traditional garlic soup in bread so check it out if you like winter soups.

4 servings of soup:

• 3 handfuls of dried or fresh chopped mushrooms
• 1 medium onion
• 2 large carrots
• 5 medium potatoes
• 1 medium parsley root
• 1 tbsp of butter or lard
• 2 tbsp of all-purpose flour
• 2 liters of vegetable broth (water and dried bouillon will do also)
• salt
• handful of marjoram
• 2-4 cloves of garlic

You can add more or less of the vegetables depending on how much you like them.

1 loaf of bread (1 serving):

• 500 g/17.6 oz of hard wheat flour + 1 extra tsp
• 1 tsp of sugar
• 300 ml/10 oz of buttermilk
• 40 g/1.4 oz of fresh yeast (or about half a tsp of dried yeast)
• 2 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp of caraway seeds
• 1 tbsp of vinegar
• 1 tbsp of honey
• 1 tbsp of oil

Since we are cooking with mushrooms, we have to have a talk first.

Mushroom picking as basically a national sport in my country. It does have it's risks and that's why we follow one simple rule - pick only those you know on 100 %. If you don't know the mushroom, if you're not sure or if you think you might have the right one based on a picture in a book, just leave it there. Or buy mushrooms in a store.

Never ever ever ever cook with mushrooms you don't know.

What type of mushrooms is ideal for this soup?

Typically dried champignons or boletus would be used, fresh ones are often used rather for other dishes, however, you can use fresh ones, of course.

BUT you can really use any kind of mushrooms , just use what you have like our ancestors did. In fact, for this recipe I used a mixture of fresh girolle (Cantharellus cibarius) and armillaria.

This is my buttermilk bread recipe and it's great to serve soup in because it has a very thick and hard crust so it holds the liquid very well.

First, heat up the buttermilk a little, just to be lukewarm. Then sprinkle the yeast on it, add 1 tsp of flour and 1 tsp of sugar and stir a little. Cover the bowl with the yeast mixture with a clean rug and let it rest for 15 minutes in a warm place. Small bubbles should start forming, that means the yeast is working.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, caraway seeds, honey, oil and vinegar and mix well. Then add the yeast mixture and knead properly. And I mean really properly, it takes at least 15 minutes in hand to reach the right texture of the dough. You can use a kitchen robot, of course.

The dough is very dense and not easy to knead. At first you might notice some amount of flour that just won't incorporate in the dough but don't worry, it will. The resulting dough should be very compact and maybe a little sticky but not enough to stick to your fingers.

Form a ball (picture 1), place it in a bowl and sprinkle with some flour (picture 2), cover the bowl and let it rise in a warm place for one hour. This dough won't rise much but that's ok (picture 3),

Preheat the oven on 250 °C/480 °F with a baking tray inside the oven. Then transfer the bread dough onto the tray and immediately lower the temperature to 210 °C/410 °F. Bake for 45 minutes (every oven is a little different so check your bread the first time you bake it. The correct color should be somewhere between medium and dark brown.

Take the bread out and let it rest until completely cold.

When the bread is not warm anymore, cut off the top – not too much, you don’t want the loaf too open.

Cut a circular shape with a knife, copying the shape of the opening. Don’t cut too low, you don’t want to penetrate the bottom of the loaf. Using a spoon, kind of dig out the inside of the bread. Go also into the sides but very carefully. Leave some soft inside, especially at the bottom. Don’t scrape it all off, leave some of the soft inside.

Keep the inside, you can later soak it in the soup.

Now, the ideal thing would be to let the loaf dry for a day but you can use it fresh.

1. Clean and dice or slice the mushrooms
2. Dice the potatoes, and onion, slice the carrot and cut the parsley root in two or three large pieces.
3. Put some lard or butter in the pan and melt it. Fry the onion just a little, then add the flour and stir while you let it fry, this will be the roux for thickening the soup.
4. Add the vegetable broth and stir properly so the roux distributes evenly. Add the vegetables and mushrooms to the broth and simmer for 20 minutes
5. Add salt and marjoram to taste. Smash the garlic, add to the soup and boil for 1 minute.

Fill the bread with the soup. To serve it in style cover the loaf with the top you cut off. And enjoy your meal!

1. Gluten-free is no problem! Just skip making the roux and when the vegetables are boilt soft, place about 1/4 of them in a blender and blend them to purée. Then stir the purée back into the soup.
2. Instead of dried or fresh mushrooms you can use pickled mushrooms. They add sour taste to the soup which might sound weird but it actually tastes great and fresh. It's an ideal taste for the spring.
3. If you like the sour taste and creamy soups, stir two tablespoons into the soup.
4. If you're cooking for young children, skip the garlic.