Remember when I got a bread machine, and I was all excited about it, and then discovered that I was completely incapable of creating anything that resembled an actual loaf of bread that you might actually eat? It’s because 1) even though I know from years and years and years of experience that you really do have to be precise when baking, I hate that, and 2) I’m lazy and those measuring cups are on a very high-up shelf and eh.
Anyway, I posted about my bread mishaps and a reader sent me her family’s recipe, assuring me that it was foolproof. And it was! So I started making it pretty much every time we had company mostly because it was so fun to just casually mention “Oh, yeah, made that from scratch” while depositing a big loaf of warm bread on the table, and then wait for the impressed back-pats to pour in (when you’ve had the number of baking disasters I have, you’ll take all the impressed back-pats you can get).
Well, I haven’t baked in awhile – it’s just not a thing I do a ton of during the summer months – and apparently this is one of those “use it or lose it situations.”
It appears that I have lost it.
That is what my bread looked like when it emerged from the machine after three hours of baking, and that is my son’s hand trying to taste it, because only a two-year-old would think that a pile of unbaked flour with some yeast sprinkles on top looks like a yummy snack.
Oh, the shame.
P.S. I actually do know what I did wrong: I piled in all the ingredients before realizing that I’d forgotten to install the little swivel-widget that actually mixes the batter in the bottom of the pan, and sort of plowed my way through all the carefully-constructed ingredient-layers to hook it on.
It turns out that you can’t do that. Don’t do that.
Do this. Much better.
