Last Updated on June 17, 2021 by Michelle

Homemade sourdough bread bowls make me super happy.

Even in the midst of a viral pandemic that is sweeping the world. Even after a not-so-great sugar season, that gave us about 1/2 the total amount of maple syrup that we usually make. Even in the midst of a cold, dreary, gray-sky spring day that doesn’t feel like spring… Even then, these bowls make me happy.

How to Make Sourdough Bread Bowls

So today I’m sharing with you how I make these little edible bowls that hold my soup and cheer my day.

If you’re new to sourdough

Actually, there isn’t much to it, if you know how to make sourdough to begin with. If you’re new to sourdough, I got ya covered. I didn’t take up this art of bread making until recently myself, so I remember all too well the aura of elusiveness and difficulty that surrounded the mysterious sour-tasting, wild-yeast filled bread. Well, at least in my mind.

Once I just forced myself to take the plunge, sink or swim, succeed or fail, good crumb or bad, I realized it’s a pretty forgiving thing…. this “thing” of sourdough breadmaking.

I documented every step–every detail of how I make my sourdough bread–from creating your first starter to pulling the amazingness out of the hot oven, in this post all about Making Sourdough Bread.

This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

Yes, you can adapt it to fit your needs

To make sourdough bread bowls, I simply follow the recipe that I shared with you a few weeks ago (see my sourdough bread recipe right here), and I form 3-4 small balls of dough that I bake in this dutch oven that I love for bread baking. Yes, you do have to bake them all separately. Unless you have a couple dutch ovens (which believe it or not I do) and a large oven that will hold two dutch ovens at one time (which, sadly, I don’t).

And, yes, your dough will be much smaller than the circumference of your dutch oven. That’s totally fine. I remember the first time I did this I thought the bread would flatten out into a useless dough circle, but rest assured the dough will rise in the ball and be a nice little bowl for you.

Once the bread has cooled, cut out a divet into the round loaf so you have a bowl on the bottom and a wonderful (albeit odd shaped) piece of bread to eat with your soup.

Full disclosure: these pictures were taken over the course of many weeks… two different batches of bread bowls I made. I tend to prefer the bread bowl less crisp on the outside (the bottom picture), so it’s nice to eat when I’m all finished with my creamy soup and then finish off the bread.

Yet more full disclosure: I also sometimes store my bread bowl, covered in the fridge, and reuse it for another bowl of soup the next day. (I do scrape the soup out well after the first use and wouldn’t, of course, serve it to anyone other than myself.) In that case, the crisper outside crust works a little better.

Also, btw, if I’m the only one in the house who wants soup in a bowl on any given week, I like to double my recipe, then divide my prepared dough so that I have about 1/4 of the dough to make a large bread bowl and the other 3/4 is perfect to make one long loaf of sourdough bread in this pan–which happens to be one of my absolute favorite things in my kitchen. To know the other favorite items in my farmhouse kitchen, check out my full list of what I couldn’t live without in my farmhouse kitchen.

I mention this to encourage you to start with this recipe and then adapt it to whatever works best for you.

What soups are perfect in a sourdough bread bowl?

While you could truly serve any soup in a sourdough bread bowl, I am partial to the rich, creamy soups that soak into the tangy bread and make for sheer deliciousness, like my super-easy Squash Soup. My favorite combination? Cheesy broccoli soup in sourdough.

Gosh, I’m hungry just thinking about it.

Why would anyone have two dutch ovens?

As a side note, if you noticed above that I casually mentioned I have 2 dutch ovens, you may have wondered why. It turns out…

wait for it… because not may people can claim this interesting fact…

A cast iron dutch oven was included in the purchase of our house!

You see, our old farmhouse, which we built around 1800, has an open-fire cook area in the kitchen.

(Don’t be too impressed… our old farmhouse came with a lot of headaches and crooked walls and floors too.)

So the previous owner decided to leave a few cast iron items–including the dutch oven which they left hanging in the fireplace–and the handmade tools they had created for using with the pizza oven.

When I’m not using my dutch oven for bread making, I love heating Maple Apple Cider over the fire in it. Or taco soup.

Come to think of it, the only soup recipe I’ve shared here on SoulyRested is my super-easy Squash Soup. I guess now that I have published these directions for making sourdough bread bowls, I should consider sharing some soup recipes,huh? I do share my Homemade Taco Seasoning recipe here.

 

Here are some other links that might interest you:

How to make sourdough starter & bread.

How to make sourdough pizza crust.

The secret to making the perfect (giant!) cookie.

Super-easy Squash Soup.

 

---

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.” John 6:35.

---