Be Brave. Bake Bread

I am a Pinterest addict when it comes to recipes. I’ve told myself to make everything that I pin. So if it’s on my “Wifen’ It” board then I’ve made the dish already, or I am about to in the next few weeks.

So I was really excited when I saw two super easy recipes for baking bread that didn’t include yeast. Just baking soda.

Or so I thought.

My motto that fateful day was “Be Brave. Bake Bread.” I was feeling proud of myself, because I was going to attempt this bread business. As I readied the recipes, I just thought about how amazed Ben was going to be, how proud I was going to feel for accomplishing this feat and how awesomely awesome this homemade bread was because it didn’t need yeast. Say WHAT?!  After I stuck the first bread recipe in the oven, I started in on the next homemade bread venture. The second recipe called for baking soda.

Or so I thought.

I added 7 teaspoons of baking soda, yes SEVEN  teaspoons of baking soda to one single bread recipe. At this point in the bread adventure, I was pretty much on top of the world. I was just feeling pretty good about myself. After all,  I was being brave. I was baking bread. 

I pulled the first bread recipe out of the oven and it tasted it awful. I was certain that I followed the recipe correctly and the bread was just supposed to taste like this….

I hadn’t connected the dots yet…you know, about the baking soda. The acidic taste was bitter and it churned my stomach. The bread did smell good, though. Deceptive little loaf that it was.

I was hoping beyond hope that this other recipe would turn out. As you can tell,  dots were not connecting that day. I sliced into a piece, anxious.

At first, it didn’t taste bad. It was actually pretty good, tolerable at the least. This homemade bread also smelled good. More deception, my poor baker’s soul. But it took just 10 minutes to become flat as the acidic taste of churning returned.

I was sad.

For redemption, I made Chocolate/Peanut butter bars, you know, to assure myself that I could do something right. A couple hours later, in a frantic state, I realized my grave mistake. I used baking soda instead of baking powder! Took you long enough, you wounded, novice bread baker.

I was deflated. And what’s more, Chocolate/Peanut butter bars can only taste so good when you have an exorbitant amount of baking soda bitter bread on the counter top.

I told my husband about it when he came home and he didn’t mind one bit. He just hugged me and helped me decide what to do with the baking soda bread.

The solution?

We threw away some and kept some!

Because the dog liked my baking soda bread, so my husband and I gave pieces of baking soda bread to the dog while we happily frolicked in the grass like a happily ever after married couple. Speical baking soda bread was on the menu tonight and it was fun to have.  I mean, bread for the dog, that’s good stuff.

The next day I saw baking powder in the cabinet and I realized something.  Learning to bake bread is a lot like getting right back on a horse after it bucks you off. It’s a rather good comparison if you’ve been bucked off a horse before, and you stink at baking bread.

Anyway,

I grabbed the ingredients again with the motto of you just gotta do it again, until you get it right. I put the ingredients together  and this time I was feeling less awesome and far less proud. I was also praying. After I pulled these loaves out of the oven, they looked better. Promising, even.

I tasted them, delicious. And this novice baker was happy as could be. It sure felt good to get back on that stubborn horse! I could end this story here, talking about how important it is to get right back to it after you fail. But it doesn’t end here.

There’s more.

Oh, yes.

There’s much, much more.

You see, I made the baking soda dog bread in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, so I left it over at her house. No one was home at theb present time of this baking soda catastrophe. And since we were still letting the dog have some of the bread, it still casually graced the counter top in all it’s baking soda glory.

However, my mother-in-law was to arrive this evening along with extended family. It was just a simple overnight stay for most of them, but I wanted everything to be just right. I cleaned, organized, and even had fresh chocolate chip cookies baked and ready for when they arrived. All the while, I told myself to get that dumb baking soda dog bread off the counter top before they came to the house.

I didn’t remember.

And by the time I did,  it was too late.

When I finally realized that I had left it there, I rushed into the kitchen as a group of extended family stood there talking.  I grabbed the bread with these words. And I quote, “Don’t eat this bread. It’s bad bread. I feed it to the dog.” I left as fast as I came, unsure of what was worse. The prospect that someone might have eaten this baking soda dog bread or the realization that these were my first words to people I barely knew. What must they think….

I hoped beyond hope that no one had eaten that bread, but the situation is dire, you see. Because, the next day I found out that my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law ate a piece of that baking soda dog bread. You can read that sentence twice if you need to. Anyway, she didn’t say a word about the taste, but I sure hope her stomach didn’t churn like mine did when I digested that pathetic, deceptive, excuse of a homemade recipe.

You see,

That bread was meant for the dog.

And apparently my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law.

But anyway, Be Brave, Bake Bread