The original plan was to write in this thing every week on Sunday afternoon’s while David and I wind down from whatever it is that we were doing that weekend.

Not working out like that so far. Ah well. At least I’m here, right? Right.

I really should re-cap this past year, it’s been quite the eventful one but that’s a bit too ambitious for me at the moment. What you, dear reader, will read next is the re-cap of the debacle that was my first attempt at baking bread. Oh yes, I took on the task of five-minute artisan bread.

Only it did not take no damn five minutes and I ended up injured and bleeding on my kitchen floor. Oh, but we’ll get to that part soon enough.

Since I stay at home all day, I keep myself occupied with reading design, style and food blogs. The food blogs are normally where I get the inspiration for that night’s hopefully edible dinner.

Late Friday evening, I decide to make a copycat of Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscano, one of the only dishes I like from there. We decided on this soup and bread because I was suffering from a massive toothache (due for a root canal right after Alexis is born) and couldn’t bite down on anything hard without tearing up.

Have you ever seen those movies where someone’s in so much pain that they do something crazy like shoot themselves in the foot to take their mind off it? I never understood it until that night. I was in so much pain that I resorted to socking myself repeatedly in the cheek. I called David, my husband, sobbing hysterically and the man dropped everything at the office to come and be with me. Totally armed with sensodyne, tylenol and a copy of the latest Vogue no less. I’m one lucky gal.

But I digress. Let’s see … so after brushing with the Sensodyne and a few bear hugs from my husband, I set out to make the soup. David dashed out again to pick up some dutch crust bread to accompany dinner.

We’re setting the table with the news blaring in the background and David says, “Oh shit, that’s disgusting!”. I look up and I see what looks like a rat baked into a sandwich roll.

We look at each other and both mutter something about making our own bread from now on. I remember thinking this a few weeks ago, having read a yelp thread about a couple of folks finding large bugs in their loaves of sandwich bread. I had even bookmarked a few recipes to try out but never got around to it.

That night was the night. As soon as we finished dinner (the soup came out great btw!) I pulled out the yeast, flour, and warm water. Then I let that rise for a few hours. What was great about this recipe was that you can make the dough and keep it in your fridge for up to two weeks. When you felt like eating some bread, all you had to do was throw it in the oven. Score! I thought.

I was missing some things according to the recipe, just instrumental stuff. I figured it was a ploy to get me to run out to the hell I know as the 24 hour Walmart in West Sacramento to buy a pizza stone, cornmeal and a pizza peel. Oh, I would show them, those artisan bread making gods … you can’t fool me into dropping $50 at 4 a.m.!

I substituted the pizza peel for an upside down baking sheet and used a mound of flour instead of the cornmeal. The recipe says to make a round out of your risen bread dough and let that rest on a mound of cornmeal to get it to slide off the pizza peel and onto the pizza stone easily. I thought I was soooo clever using the things that I already had.

Instead of a pizza stone, I decide to put my pretty Le Creuset cassarole baking dish thing to work, thinking that it had the same texture and weight of a pizza stone … it just wasn’t flat. We can maneuver around that, right?

So, I preheat the oven per the directions. Put the pizza stone on the middle rack and a broiler pan on the bottom rack. Preheat the pans alone at 450 degrees as your rounded bread dough rests on your pizza peel covered in cornmeal.

I couldn’t find my broiler pan (ie: it was at the bottom of the deep drawer and there was no way I was going to sift through all my baking sheets/cupcake molds/blah blah to get it) and so I decided to grab whatever was on top.

A glass baking dish.

The 20 minutes pass, the pans are piping hot. I try to gracefully slide my bread off of my “pizza peel” and into the casserole dish. It ends up landing upside down and loosing it’s shape. I figured to ride with it and push the rack back into the oven.

Now for the last part. According to the recipe, steam helps make a gorgeous crust on bread. That’s why a heated broiler pan was called for. After your bread is placed on the pizza stone, you’re to put a cup full of hot water into the broiler pan.

But see, let’s remember that I, genius, used a glass baking pan in lieu of a metal broiler pan. Metal and water good. Hot glass and water = KABLOOOOOOOOOM. Seriously, google it.

Yes, that was I at 4 a.m. screaming bloody (literally) murder because as soon as I poured that cup of hot water into the glass pan, it exploded all over the oven, onto the kitchen floor and onto my bare legs and feet.

I limped and fell down near our dining table and David comes to help me. I’m yelling because there’s a small pool of blood on the ground and I can’t figure out which foot its coming from because I’m 8 months pregnant and can’t reach my damn feet. Poor kid, he’s been working insane shifts (think 10 a.m. to 3-4 a.m.) for the past few weeks and was actually due in to work at 5 a.m. Instead of enjoying his morning coffee, he’s rubbing neosporin and bandaging up his wife who obviously fails at this domesticity thing. He helps me to the couch, brings me something to drink and tells me to go to sleep … and not touch anything in the kitchen.

So, I wake up a few hours later, tooth still hurting, feet still sore and burned but no longer bleeding. Throw on some slippers just in case there was still some glass on the ground and open the fridge.

There on my bottom shelf is the rest of the bread dough … covering EVERYTHING else on that shelf. I guess the container that I put it in wasn’t large enough and the dough kept expanding overnight causing the container to burst open.

Good Morning to Me.

I guess we’re doomed to eat rat bread.