Can bread ever really taste so bad that no one will eat it? YES!

Baking tip of the day: Make sure you label your flours immediately when you get home from the bulk store.

Ok this was a tough lesson for me yesterday folks. I went to the bulk store a couple of days ago to buy a plethora of flours, nuts, and seeds for my bread baking. I have been religiously using my bread machine lately in an attempt to bring more fiber in our diet as well as really control the amount of salt and chemicals in what we eat.

So yesterday I baked a loaf of Boston brown bread as well as a loaf of cheese bread to use up some of the three year old cheddar in my crisper that was just beginning to turn fuzzy. The Boston brown turned out delightful. It rose nicely and although a denser loaf, was everything I had hoped it would be. The cheese bread, on the other hand, emerged as a deflated hockey puck with a terrible sour taste and a doughy, chewy, almost a not-cooked nasty consistency. I couldn't figure it out. What had I done wrong? Once cooled I put it in a large ziplock bag and figured that toasting it for breakfast in the morning might help the situation.

During the night I dreamt of bread. I baked a lot of it apparently during my sleep, trying the recipe over and over again, since when I awoke my brain had solved the problem. What had I done? Unknowingly, I had mixed up the bags of sourdough flour for bread flour. Of course! That would totally explain the really chewy texture, the sour taste, and the hockey puck like appearance. It all makes sense now.

Well I tried toasting the bread this morning for breakfast, and I have to tell you it was still a dunce. Even my spouse who will pretty much consume anything baked took one bite and spat it out. I tried to choke mine down too, but the sourness left a biley taste in my mouth, and I just couldn't seem to chew through the doughy mess. So sadly the remainder of the loaf went into the garbage. I don't think that I could have even fed it to the dogs. And so, my lesson for today is that I need to remember to label all of my bulk bags either in store or immediately when I get home or risk more nasty disasters. I suppose I should count my blessings that I have had many bread baking successes to date. Since those who know me well know that I am in fact not a baker, but a burner, albeit an enthusiastic one!