Laughter in the Kitchen (part 3)

Hand-kneaded Bread

One day I decided that I was going to try hand-kneading my bread. I had made bread in our Bosch mixer numerous times and it always turned out well.  I felt quite confident that I could hand-knead the dough and it would still turn out just fine. So I pull out a recipe book and start flipping through till I come to the section about hand-kneading your bread. I read through it quickly, thinking I got it all down. Every thing goes well, and I finally start kneading the bread. I kneaded it till it looked smooth and elasticity, just as it said and then let it rise. It rose wonderfully. It seemed to be working quite well. I was pretty proud of my self. “Who says Hand-kneading is hard” I thought to myself as I puffed up with self glorification. Nevertheless, when all had been said and done, I pull out the bread from the oven and it was all sunk in (I, of course, blamed it on my sisters for being to wild and jumping), to my great distress. When I told my mom that I had done exactly as it said and it even had risen well, my mom says “and how long did you knead it”. “Well, the person who wrote out the recipe said that you’re suppose to knead it for 10 minutes, but her husband only kneads it for about 5 minutes and it always turned out perfect, so I thought I could only do 5 minutes, too, but the truth is I didn’t time myself so I might have only done 3 minutes.” My mom’s response to that excuse was “Yeah, and her husband is probably a whole lot stronger than you, too.” Since then I have been able to successfully hand-knead the bread without it sinking afterwards.

A Bread-maker Cake

For those who might not know, a bread-maker basically does all the work for you. All you have to do is throw all the ingredients into the bread pan and then put it in the machine and it will do the rest for you. Well, one day I decided I wanted to try to make a cake in one of those things. There were recipes for it and I thought it would taste really good and it would be a great experiment, also a good excuse to have dessert. So I throw in the ingredients and put it in and wait for the signal that proclaims that it is done. Well, some how it didn’t get all the way cooked, so after that we had to put the pan in the oven to get it cooked in the middle. Finally it was done (or done as it would ever be) and we were ready to eat it. Although it wasn’t nasty, it was certainly no one’s favorite cake and they all begged me not to try it again even though I thought it was quite delicious. I still plan to try it again some day after I get married. ;)