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Now, here's the fun part. You can spice up your tomato base however you like. Choose your favorite style of tomato soup, and just start adding the ingredients into the bowl of tomatoes. When I prepare my base, I add things like celery, onions, and okra. If I have it, I'll throw in some thyme. Honestly, whenever I discover a new type of tomato soup, I return to this recipe and make it with those new ingredients. If you're a fan of tomato soup, you'll find yourself returning to this recipe time and time again.
While you're preparing your tomato soup base, you can preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. I usually only start pre-heating once I have the tomatoes peeled and in the bowl to avoid the risk of getting distracted and forgetting about the oven. While you're at it, grease an oven-proof casserole dish with nonstick spray or butter.
Make sure to mix the ingredients of your tomato soup base in the bowl, and to crush the tomatoes lightly between your fingers to make large chunks. Once you're satisfied with the mixture, you can pour it all into the casserole dish.
There should be enough fluid to fill in the bottom of the casserole pan, but not enough to cover the crushed tomatoes. Check out the image below as a reference.
If you were wondering this entire time what was going to prevent this soup-inspired casserole from turning into an awful mush, here's your answer. Remember that bread you prepared earlier? Tear off small pieces of it and spread them evenly over the tomato soup base
Use it to cover the tomato soup base in the casserole dish. The bread will soak up most of the fluid from the tomatoes, and help bind everything together into a cohesive casserole filling. There should be enough bread to almost fully cover the tomato soup base beneath it, as seen in the image below.
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