Bread Machine Mistakes and Other Lessons Learned

Bread dough left on any surface past 5 minutes first turns into a sticky goo, then into a rock so hard that it will cut your hands. You need a chisel to get it off the counter. Picture this: Inside the bread machine there are cakes of hardened lava. Cleaning this mess would have to wait until I got home from work.

The next morning rolls around, I drag my hungover ass into work. I

I drag home and start making the kolache rolls.

Before I started cleaning, I formed the walnut sized dough balls. Why? Because if these kolaches were like the others, it would take about 10 years to rise for the 2nd time. So I get my balls formed.

I wait the obligatory 2 hours.

The balls are actually moving along more nicely than I dare to hope. I almost did a smarty pants dance, but I restrained myself lest the kolache karma take over and disaster ensued.

I got smart this time and made them in disposable trays so that I don't have to spend 10 years cleaning my pans. I popped the kolaches in the oven and hoped for the best.
Then came cleaning the bread machine. GROSS! Never again would I leave a bread machine unattended!! If it were mine, I might have thrown it out to save the trouble. (Or at least rock, paper, scissored Jon for the chore of cleaning it.) Being that I HAD to return it, I scrubbed away and remove Mt. Vesuvius from the interior.

As I excavated, I wondered how the machine did on non-Herculean breads. I decided to start a rosemary loaf while waiting for the kolaches to bake. We'll see how that goes.