I just chop an onion or two, sauté it in a little butter then add chopped and seeded tomatoes. Sauté a little more, add good chicken or ham stock to cover and simmer until soft. Blitz and add a little cream. If I'm using ham stock I brown a bunch of diced bacon and add it to the soup after it's been blitzed.

I can tomatoes in the summer whole with a thyme sprig, a bay leaf and an onion slice. I then use my hand blender and whiz it, put it in a saucepan with some chicken stock, heat and then add cream and reheat. Sometimes I add a spoonful of pesto when I serve it.

If I follow This recipe from Allrecipes.com. It's so delicious and I've made it several times.

Well, yes, I do, because my backyard looks like this every summer:

I use this one, we like it. My daughter can't have gluten, though, so sometimes I skip the roux and just add cream at the end. If you don't mind the peels, you can just hit it with the immersion blender. I don't because I don't like those little papery bits of peel in there, but I'm weird about texture. Other people don't even notice. My youngest daughter adds more sugar. I don't.

Fresh Tomato Soup

• 4 cups chopped fresh tomatoes

• 1 sliced onion

• 4 whole cloves

• 2 cups chicken broth

• 2 tablespoons butter

• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2 teaspoons white sugar, or to taste

1. In a stockpot, over medium heat, combine the tomatoes, onion, cloves and chicken broth. Bring to a boil, and gently boil for about 20 minutes to blend all of the flavors. Remove from heat and run the mixture through a food mill into a large bowl, or pan. Discard any stuff left over in the food mill.

2. In the now empty stockpot, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour to make a roux, cooking until the roux is a medium brown. Gradually whisk in a bit of the tomato mixture, so that no lumps form, then stir in the rest. Season with sugar and salt, and adjust to taste.

4. Annie

There are two reasons that I know of for thickening a soup with bread--because the flour in bread is already cooked (as for gazpacho) or to use up the stale bread. Water bagels (good ones) also have a distinctive malt taste, so that might be another reason.

When I make tomato soup, I don't use a flour/bread thickener. I just condense it to the desired consistency.

I've had tomato soup with buttermilk to thicken

I don't care for my tomato soup thickened. My favourite is a jar or two of my home canned stewed tomatoes (tomatoes,celery, onions, bell peppers) , chicken broth, finely chopped cabbage and garbonzo beans.

Another huge favourite of mine is Katie's Tomato Garlic Soup.