Sunday, January 6, 2013

Test Kitchens!

Today has been a quiet, peaceful great day, because with the help from Jim, The Mineral Man, we finally solved the mystery to why his delicious, secret gluten free, 100% stoned ground whole wheat bread recipe, always cratered at the bottom of our loaves.

Yesterday, when I gave Kinky a halved loaf of of my dented bread, he teased me about it and this morning when we talked all he could do was rave about how delicious my bread was.

So, this morning after Tony and I did our outdoor chores I came inside and carefully read the Oster bread machine instructions to see if I could figure out what the problem with the bread was. Then I checked my e-mail and found out that Jim had also been trying to figure out why our breads were sunk in the middle. Then he sent me another e-mail to let me know that in his test kitchen, he had just started another loaf in his Oster and told me the changes he had made to his recipe, hoping that would solve the problem.

Wanting to help Jim  get to "the bottom" of this, I decided to bake another loaf, adjusting the recipe too with a few minor things in my test kitchen. And three and a half hours later when the bread was finished baking, I pulled the hot bread bucket out of Oscar (Yes, I've named the Oster Oscar, because I know how to pronounce it correctly.) and turned it upside down on the cooling rack, so it would fall out—it was missing a sink hole!

After I had half-hollered at Tony about the loaf being perfect, he came running down the hallway to see for himself. "It looks like a normal loaf of bread and it smells delicious." Then I grabbed my camera and shot it, so I could send it to Jim, who was busily baking bread in his test kitchen.


Please note that the small indention in the middle is where I had to remove the bread machine's paddle. Ten minutes later, after sending Jim the above photo I turned the bread right side up and halved it, to make sure the inside looked right. Then I grabbed my camera again and shot it, so I could send The Mineral Man how the inside looked.


After Tony and I ate a slice of the warm, healthy, gluten-free, delicious bread, Tony grabbed his camera to go outside to take pictures, so while he was gone I wrote three more pages of The Cowgirl Sisterhood: The Membership Drive, Part II novella and I am very pleased with it, because it's funny and made me laugh out loud.

Before I get back to my writing, I want to especially thank H-E-B for helping our rescue ranch once again, by including us in their H-E-B TexasLife January magazine. And I also want to thank Jim for helping me solve the real life mystery of, Our Dented Loaves. And that is about it for today.

Y'all have a great evening! 

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