Frankenbread!

With all my experimenting in the mmmwwwahahaha... laBORatory (uh, kitchen) lately, it was bound to happen sooner or later. But what better time than Halloween week to have a kitchen disaster that resulted in a monsterous bread loaf?

Gads, is that ugly, or what?! Reminds me of something from the movie Alien!

Actually, I wasn't even experimenting. I followed the recipe in our bread machine booklet to the letter. But for some supernatural reason (anti-carb creatures? Angry gluten-free ghosts?), the bread machine was unable to knead the dough, despite my additions of water and repeated poking at it with a spatula! When the first rise cycle began, I still had a mess of floury dough lumps in the bottom of the pan. So I took it out and kneaded it manually till it had the right consistency, and put it back in the bread machine. After the second knead cycle, there was a respectably round ball of dough in the bottom of the pan, so I thought the danger had passed. But when the timer went off and I lifted the lid...

EEEEEEEEK! It's ALIVE!!!

And it's not just ugly, it's incredibly dense... there isn't one single air pocket anywhere in this loaf. If you bonked someone on the head with this bread, you'd fracture their skull! But because I hate to waste ingredients, and it tastes good despite the serious texture problem, we've been gamely eating it with the wonderful split pea soup I also made yesterday. But I have a feeling the deer and birds will be having their turn at this thing before the day's out, unless anyone has any other ideas!

And speaking of Frankenfood, I urge everyone to sign this Food Democracy Now petition...

Stop Big Ag in the White House - say no to Monsanto - Crop Life

In happier news, BW got an unscheduled day off today! The big blizzard in CO and UT meant no UPS trailers from Denver or Salt Lake City today, so they had to cut several routes and BW's was one of them! Yay! (Plus he's on vacation next week!) It's a gloomy, rainy, cold day and we just got two Netflix movies yesterday (Nightmare Before Christmas and The Bad Seed), so I think we'll just relax and watch scary flicks and drink Teeccino and gnaw on our Frankenbread!