Baking Bread

Last night: The city is covered in ice, but that's ok! I have food on hand. The men folks want sloppy joes for dinner. We are out of bread, but that's ok! I have yeast on hand. The recipes in The Joy of Cooking all call for scalded milk. I don't want to scald any milk. But that's ok! John can give me his bread recipe!

So last night I baked 2 loaves of bread. I have a problem with bread. It seems all I can make is sourdough Italian bread. It's quite tasty, and I'm always disappointed because I'm not trying to make sourdough Italian bread. So last night, I tried to make sourdough Italian bread to support some sloppy joes. I followed John's recipe, and somehow made a giant Hawaiian bread biscuit. It was really good and very dense. We ate the whole loaf. I had enough dough left to make another loaf, so I cut into it and drizzled honey in the middle and baked it up. L and I just tried eating it. It is the nastiest thing I've ever baked. It smells like papier mache. It probably tastes like papier mache, too. I've never eaten papier mache, so I wouldn't know. It's floury and thick. It weighs a ton. I'm afraid to feed it to the birds, it's so bad.

My bread was so bad...
How bad was it?
It was so bad, my son said, "You should throw the bread away, and burn the pan it was baked in, and salt the oven in which it was baked."

Thank you, thank you. That loaf of bread is, to date, the worst failure of my life. :)

So my question is, how did one batch of dough yeild such a disparity in loaves?
Like I said before, I have a problem with bread. :)