What I Did Today

Handsome, are't they, but they very nearly didn't happen. Let me tell you what happened.

A while back I decided that kneading bread was starting to get a bit much for my hands so I invested in a whizz bang bread maker. Stuff happened and so I didn't actually get to try to use it until today. It was not a success. You are supposed to be able to dial and select what you want according to how big a loaf you're making, how dark you want the crust and so on but no matter how I tried and followed the instructions it would not let me get past the default setting. I called on Pisces - I was clutching at straws here given he's very much a technophobe and so unlikely to have any useful input - and he wasn't able to offer any suggestions either.

At this point the ingredients were all sitting in the pan and in preference to letting them go to waste I decided to tip them into my bread-making bowl - yes, I do have one - and finish it off by hand. It's been quite a while since I made bread by hand but I was back into the rhythm in no time.

While my loaves were sitting out on the veranda in the sun to rise I went to look up customer support for the machine. Guess what, I'm by no means the only one who has had this problem with the settings. I got onto a website - not the company one which had nothing more than the same instructions that had failed me so far but a review site where company representatives are supposed to give answers - where there were a number of plaintive requests for help for just this problem. I only found one reply which was a rather patronising suggestion that the person should look at the instruction manual - and for good measure the instructions were quoted direct from the book. This was, of course, useless, since we had already been following just those instructions. By now I was pretty frustrated and decided to simply forget the machine for now and call the company when I was less irritated.

Meanwhile my bread was rising beautifully and continued to behave as it should.  It was too late now to have for lunch - the original plan - but I just tried some slathered with butter and it was fine although not great. This recipe was one from the bread maker book and I think maybe it works better in the machine. That said it's still tasty enough to eat for now.