my bread doesn't taste like Kleenex

My first entry is a success, rather than a misadventure: I made bread! With my own hands!

It wasn't supposed to be made by hand. I fully intended to use my KitchenAid mixer, but it's broken. Whatever regulates the motor speed doesn't seem to work. I discovered this when I turned the mixer to "low" and it immediately kicked into high, throwing flour all over the counter and stove. (Oh, wait. There's the misadventure part.) Since I already had everything in the bowl, I had to do something with it. So I decided to bite the bullet and do what women have been doing for centuries: knead the bread by hand.

I grew up watching my mother bake bread, so you'd think I'd know what proper dough is supposed to look and feel like. Not so. I had Troublesmith read me the recipe very carefully while I kneaded and watched the timer, and mentally kept my fingers crossed the whole time.

I'd also miscalculated the amount of time it would take to rise (I missed the part of the recipe where it said to let the dough rise twice. TS put in a movie to keep me awake, and I got up every 30 minutes or so to check the dough (and later, the bread in the oven).

Three hours later, ta-da! Fresh, hot bread! It makes delicious toast, fantastic bread and butter (there's no better bread for butter than the soft, homemade kind), and my husband likes it so much that he even turned down homemade ziti in favor of a sandwich for yesterday's dinner!

The only thing I changed from the recipe was the last 20 minutes of cooking. The bread didn't seem to be getting the crust I wanted, so I upped the temperature to 400 degrees. Perfect.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/light-wheat-bread/

P.S. I chose the title for this post the day I started writing it; it's the punch line to something. Several days later, I can't remember the joke.