I make bread bowls in a couple of sizes often. I just use a very simple bread recipe like a fellow would use for French bread or maybe pizza dough.
I like to use ceramic bowls to bake my bread bowls. Very easy to do them in this manner.
The above bowls are made in the smaller ceramic bowls like you see in the picture. I use these for appetizers usually using some type of soup. I cut the center out of each bowl to make my bread bowls.
These are my larger bread bowls baked in my larger ceramic bowls. I have the center cut out of one of these bowls.
The bread bowl contains a Cajun soup.
I use the ceramic bowls idea to keep the bread bowls at the size I want and it works well.