Failures/Successes In Baking

I made a huge step towards my ultimate goal of being awesome!

I bought myself a Cuisinart Stand Mixer! (And it was quite a deal let me tell you!)

I have coveted one of these for pretty much my entire life. I would have daydreams of myself frolicking in the field hand in… bowl, making daisy chains while “So Happy Together” plays in the background.

That’s how fanatically I wanted one. And I cannot begin to tell you how much it fills my heart with glee seeing it sitting on my counter. I am not a materialistic person, but this mixer makes me as happy as world peace might.

I knew that when I got it home Wednesday night I was going to spend some time breaking it in. I had my mind made up to make my first Apple Pie and also I had it half in my mind to make some bread. I went to Safeway first and got a sack of granny smiths, a bag of sugar, some more butter and some yeast packets.

Now if I had settled on some recipes before I went to the store I might have been better prepared, but I knew that I could probably wing it if there was a hang up.

I started my apple pie by making my dough. The recipe I was using called for flour, salt, shortening and cold water. I decided that the dough recipe was too simple to use my mixer for and I went after it the old fashioned way. I wish that I had thought to use my food processor though…

I lost count in my flour scoops and just guessed when I reached the 3-cup mark, but in reality I think it ended up being more like 4 cups. I then added my salt and cut up 2/3rds of a cup of butter into the bowl. Using my dough cutter I blended it until parts of the flour were balled like they were supposed to be, and there were no more large chunks of butter. There was way too much loose flour for my liking but I went ahead and began mixing the cold water in with a fork anyway.

I was not happy with the consistency of the dough but I worked it until it held a form and divided it into two balls. I rolled out one of the balls, which took some effort, and laid it in the bottom of my cake pan.

I’ll make note that I actually did have pie pans, but I would not find them till the next day. This is what happens when you’re so excited you lose track of big details!

After the bottom crust was formed I pulled out the apple peeler and corer and watched in delight as my sweetie peeled my apples in no time at all! I had never seen a peeler in action before and could not get over how efficient it was!

After the apples were cut I tossed them in a mixture of flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a little allspice. I piled them high in the bottom crust and topped with some pats of butter.

I rolled out the second crust and placed it gently over my mound. After I cut off most of the scrap I formed a cute little ridge around the outside and protected it with some strips of foil. I placed it in my 375 degree oven and hoped for the best!

While the pie was baking I figured I needed to make some bread if I was actually going to use my mixer that night. I looked at a few recipes and decided Honey Wheat bread sounded divine. I was going to work off of both the Honey Wheat bread recipe in a Betty Crocker book and the Molasses Wheat bread recipe in the Mixer recipe book. But again, me, the excited girl who’s too excited to pay attention carefully did a few silly confused things. First I put in my mixer bowl 1 packet of yeast, 2/3rds cup of warm water, and 1/3^rd cup of flour. It tells me to mix it and let it sit for a few minutes to let it begin to make bubbles while I bring together the rest of my ingredients. I pull down my wheat flour, look in the bag and what do it see??? Moths! Growing Moths! As in larvae! Ewww! Okay so this calls for a quick change of recipe (after I get the bag the hell out of my house). I look back in the book and realize, I shouldn’t have mixed flour in with my water and yeast, and whaaat? I don’t have powdered milk, which most of the white bread recipes call for. So I think, “Screw it! Bread is simple! People have been making it forever, it’s flour and liquid and yeast! I’ll do it my own way”

So I decide that instead of Honey Wheat Bread, it’ll be Honey Bread. I look at these recipes for rough guidelines and I start adding flour to my bowl to mix willie-nillie.

After the kneading process where I’m supposed to pull the dough out to let it rise I realize I did NOT add enough flour. It is so sticky! I think I lost a quarter of the dough to the mixer bowl!

I go ahead anyway and put it in a bowl to let it rise. It rises really well and I figure I’ll just plow ahead.

Meanwhile my pie has come out of the oven smelling delicious even if it was a little lackluster in appearance. We each had a slice and declared it wonderful.

Back to the bread… It rises, and I divide it, again losing half of the dough to the bowl due to stickiness, but my wonderful boyfriend is a genius and has me coat my hands with a cooking spray to protect them. I divide the dough and form each half into loafs and let them rise again before sticking them in the oven.

Let me tell ya… I may have screwed up the recipe, but it was still super simple and it came out tasting super good. We devoured one loaf before we went to bed! I put a pat of butter on mine and Jay put some honey on his. The crust was so crisp and golden and delicious. I cannot wait to make more bread!