cornmeal crusted bread & potato and leek soup

Ten whole dollars worth of smoked salmon was consumed within a six hour span on Friday - make that fourteen dollars, actually, as the prompt grocery purchase was spawned by a super sale. Decadent? Definitely. The first encounter was during lunch: smoked salmon draped on cream cheese on the boy's homemade bread pan bread. Yes, the boy baked again, much to my delight, and did something to the effect of this:

1 cup milk
1/3 - 1/2 cup water
1 heaping tsp yeast
1 1/2 tbs brown sugar
2 3/4 cup all purp. flour
1/4 whole wheat flour
1 heaping tbs cornmeal
1 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
3/4 tsp salt

Throw ingredients into the bread maker (on the dough cycle) - once the cycle is complete, take the dough, and thoroughly crust it with more cornmeal. In the meantime, warm the oven briefly so it is slightly above room temperature: this allows for the bread to rise in an ideal environment. Place the dough into a bread pan, into the oven, and allow it to rise until it is about 1 in above bread pan. Then, she is ready to be baked at 350F for 30 min or so, until crust becomes golden.

The rest of the smoked salmon was consumed during dinner - some more on toast, but more interestingly, some in the potato leek soup I tried to improvise. As a straight up potato leek soup, it faired okay, though I am of a belief that mediocre potato leek soups are easy to come by. I'm unsure of how to zing the soup, but certainly, duck stock will not be used next time: a little bit of a waste, since the stock itself was indiscernible (another grocery run will arm us with chicken necks and backbones again).