Amish Bread and My Hell's Kitchen

Our "sweet" friends David and Shari gave the gift of an Amish "Friendship" Bread Starter. I wasn't sure how I excited I was about baking bread every 10 days but Peter seemed stoked and the sample they brought tasted awesome. So, I thought I could try it at least once. Here's what the first couple loaves looked like:



The gaping scars are where I cut off the rock hard charcoal crust.

You see, my oven is heated by the fires of Hell. If a recipe says, "Preheat to 350", I preheat to 250. If it says, "Bake for 30 minutes" I always check it at 15 and open the front door so the plume of smoke can escape before it sets off the detector.

Did I give up on the bread? No, 10 days later, I try again. The first 2 loaves are again only edible if you peel off what I like to refer to as the protective shell. The third looks better from the top but I still can't get it out of the pan.

And then I made muffins and they turned out pretty good! A little brown on the bottom but no basalt like coating!



After all that, there was still a small amount of batter in the bottom of the bowl. So, even though I had ALL THIS BREAD in my kitchen, I threw that little bit in the oven, too. I got the cutest little loaf of bread. Soft crust and everything! Here's what that looked like:



Am I going to keep this up? Am I going to let the oven with Gordon Ramsay aspirations beat me? Am I going to spend a whole afternoon on a regular baking bread? I don't know, we'll see how I feel in another 10 days.

One month old mommy

Things I heard coming out of my mouth this morning:



How did you get poop there?!



Yay! We got the boogie out!



Ok, I guess we HAVE to take a bath now.



I love you!