I have concluded there is a very good reason why bread makers were invented. They were invented for people like me, who have grandiose dreams of the smell of homemade bread wafting through the house as newly baked loafs cool on a cooling rack.
For whatever reason, the idea of making my own bread has been stuck in my head for days. I've tried my hand three times to make bread and the results have been mixed, to say the least. I made cinnamon rolls on Monday. They turned out okay. Yesterday, I thought I'd try my hand at making bread from a recipe I discovered in my Kitchen Aid cook book that came with my mixing stand. It was a disaster. I knew it wasn't going to work when I saw yeast granulars dotting my dough. To be fair to myself, the recipe called for me to mix the yeast granulars as in with the dry ingredients. I had to chuck the end result because the bread was too dense and tasted quite yeasty. It was quite a disaster.
But apparently, I didn't learn my lesson. I made cinnamon rolls again, this time from a recipe in the Kitchen Aid cook book. The reason why I keep on turning to this cook book for help is that my stand up mixer does all the work. Since I proved Monday I couldn't knead bread to save my life, I thought I'd leave it to the stand up mixer and the dough hook.
Well, I was really optimistic that it would work this time. I followed all the steps to the T. I took the temperature of the water. I warmed my mixing bowl in the oven. I timed the mixing steps. I even warmed up my oven to let the dough rise. No dice. The dough didn't rise. And if it did, it wasn't very much. Since Monday I proved that sweet dough is pretty forgiving, I continued making the cinnamon rolls. They taste and look good, which is all I was hoping for.
So my traditional bread making dreams have been dashed. Bread making clearly isn't for me. Until I get a bread maker, I'll be buying my bread from the grocery store.
