The soup is very humble: a bit of this, a bit of that, whatever was handy, which was: a little bit of veggie broth, half a jar of tomato puree, garlic, onion, kale, chickpeas, oregano, red pepper, and balsamic vinegar. It’s thin and brothy but I like it.

The bread was the harder part.

My oven hasn’t worked for the last month, and today I finally had a repair guy come out and fix it. $210 and a new igniter and sensors later, I finally had my oven back.

I immediately made use of it by proofing bread. Which I had never done in the oven. It’s an easy-to-read panel, we’ve had it four years, and I’m the one who did the research before purchasing it, and somehow I didn’t notice the “PROOF” button until recently.

Now, I have been feeding a whole wheat sourdough starter since New Year’s, and I’ve made a no-knead loaf just a few times. I was happy to have the oven back so I could get back to that practice. (That, and roasting vegetables. Oh, how I’ve missed you, roasted veggies.) Before I’d set up a space heater in the bathroom for proofing the loaf – it took many, many hours; I usually let it sit overnight or even a whole day. The oven proof took 6 hours.

So I needed to come up with something for dinner to go with warm, crusty, homemade bread. What better than a simple soup?