Knead It Monday: The Spectacular Disaster

It only took three weeks into the new year to almost set the house on fire. It seems to happen almost every year, but I think I just set a new record! And guess what, it involved this week's bread.

I decided to mix things up this time and do something a little different: baguettes. I thought it'd be nice and easy to do, since it seems to be very comparable to tried-and-true Five-Minute Artisan Bread.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Everything went well until the first rise. Usually, since the house is generally cold, I'll fire up the oven for about thirty seconds to get it warm, and then stick the covered dough in there. This time, when I checked the dough about halfway through the rising time, I thought the oven could be a little warmer, so I turned the oven on for another thirty seconds.

And then Adam called. I chatted with him, then cleaned a counter, and went to the bathroom. When I came out, the house was full of smoke.

I had forgotten to turn the oven off.

I pulled the dish out to find the towel badly singed and the dough partially cooked on top. The air was acrid with smoke from the rubberized bottom of the dish. Fortunately, the rest of the dish was metal, so I figured I could probably salvage my baguette plans.

Except, the bottom was cooked through.

So I grabbed the dough, greased a 9x13 pan, and threw the whole embarrassing lump into the oven, where it stayed for forty minutes or so.

The end result was a large, dense blob of bread. It tasted fine, so all was not lost-- in fact, it was really good toasted, accompanying a bowl of hearty vegetable soup later. As of this writing, the only testament to my botched baguettes are crumbs at the bottom of the 9x13, so I wouldn't call this a waste. If anything, I learned a valuable lesson: cell phones are dangerous to drivers and bread-makers alike. So don't text and bake!

This all happened Saturday. I wanted to try again before today, but I had to do other stuff that didn't actually place our lives in peril. Sometime later this year, I'll try my hand at baguettes again, but for now, there are many more different recipes for me to try! Come back next week for more Adventures in Breadmaking!