It’s not exactly uncommon for a meal to rely on the simple pleasures of carbohydrates to improve its enjoyability, but if there’s a premier beneficiary of bread’s abilities, it has to be soup. Let’s look at a few of the variations on the classic combination…
The Common Saltine
While certainly a midpoint between “bread” and “nothing at all,” saltines dipped in soup is a classic, so I’m counting it in this bread/soup rundown! A suitable choice that can add a little dignity to the experience of eating a sad little soup from the cafe in your office building because you forgot to pack a lunch. Textural difference is what we’re really looking for when we’re dipping bread in a soup and saltines really cut straight to this point.
Fresh Bread
The platonic ideal of soup sidekicks. You have total control over the thickness of the slices and can choose your recipe according to how crusty you want to go. As I see it, there are two primary ways for bread and soup to make contact — ripped up and left for a moment to soak in broth or soup spooned onto the bread slice itself — and fresh bread allows you to perfectly tailor the matchmaking experience according to your preferences.
Store Bought Bread
Better than a saltine, but a mere shadow of fresh bread. Be sure to turn up the toaster if you’re looking for a major contrast between the bread’s crunchiness and the soup’s viscosity.
The Bread Bowl
Truly a SHELL of a culinary experience. You might as well completely remove bread from the equation. The bread bowl asks the question, “What if you had more bread than you would usually end up with but all this bread had to be submerged in the soup for so long that it practically becomes one with the liquidy mass?” The bread bowl’s ubiquity is at most a triumph in branding on Panera Bread’s part.