Admitting our Failures

There are times when everything seems to be going perfectly. The sun shines, the birds sing, and each project that we attempt turns out beautifully!

Then there are times when we experience failures. The sun may still be shining, the birds may still sing, but that thing that we attempt is met with defeat.

Some failures are definitely worse than others, so the one I’m about to share with you could have definitely gone worse. However, I just want to use this as an example of how things in blog land do go wrong.

You may not always be privy to what goes on in the background. The messy house, the fighting children, the messy part of the reality of life amidst all of the joy that comes as well.

So here is one of my most recent failures:

I consider myself a pretty good cook, and I can follow a baking recipe with the best of them. However, sometimes food I make doesn’t quite turn out as I hope or plan.

This was the case for the Einkorn bread recipe that I posted on facebook the other day. Not too long after I posted it, I decided to go ahead and make it. My Einkorn flour had just come in, and I was so excited to see how our family would like it!

The recipe I used was a no-knead recipe, so it was more like a batter than a dough. I found out really quick, that if it rises too much in the bread pan before you bake it, the results can be disastrous!

Things were going so well. I combined all of the ingredients for my “dough” and the first rise in the bowl went super well! I was very impressed that this battery concoction could rise in the way that it did.

I poured my “dough” in my greased bread pan, and put it back in the oven for it’s second and final rise. This is where it got interesting.

I had it rising in the oven, oh so nicely, for the 30 minutes that it required. When I took it out, I still needed to preheat my oven. Little did I know, that that little bit of extra “rise” time would cause my batter to overflow.

I started noticing globs of dough start to fall from the sides of my pan. To try to remedy the situation, I quickly put my bread in the oven before it was fully preheated. This may have saved me to a certain extent, but it still wouldn’t turn out as I was originally hoping.

I didn’t even think to put a cookie sheet under the bread in case it continued dripping, until I started hearing that tell-tale sizzle of food hitting the racks and bottom of my oven. I quickly put that cookie sheet on the next rack down and let it continue to cook.

All that was left to do, was wait.

When the timer beeped, I pulled it out and had to scrape the baked on dough off of the sides of my pan before it would slide out. Then I realized it wasn’t quite done, which I was expecting since I put it in for the minimum time, so I put it back in the pan and the oven to let it finish cooking.

The final result was a very soft bread with a slightly harder flat top, and had those burnt pieces around the edges from falling. When I say it had a flat top, I mean flat as a pancake flat. There is no nice dome. I can’t even compare it to a nice banana bread look.

Nope, it was definitely a flop, but one that I can learn from.

I hope you were able to get a laugh out of one of my failures!

Until next time!

♥ Nicole