Hi everyone! Can you believe I made those? They were really yummy. Turns out I can bake bread. You see, for once in my life the problem did not occur because of operator error.
I had a hard time diagnosing it, though, because bread machines are so fickle. The instruction manuals, er, I mean, recipe books, are very insistent... even threatening in some cases. (You know, all-caps bold-face warnings, such as: IF YOU DON'T PUT THE INGREDIENTS INSIDE IN THE PROPER ORDER YOUR BREAD WILL TURN OUT GNARLY LIKE A WITCHES' FACE AND YOUR MACHINE WILL EXPLODE.)
Anyway, here's the deal. And it will seem tangential, so stay with me.
There's two types of mechanical engineering students (that scientists have identified thus far). There are the ones who've grown up around machines, taking stuff apart and putting it back together, greasy hands and always tinkering, and they're getting a degree so they can get paid to do what they already do... all of the time. Then, there's the ones who knew they wanted to do engineering, and knew they wanted to get a job... but have never touched a motor and are pretty sure they couldn't decipher between an amplifier and an inductor. I'm spilling my guts here, but I'm definitely the second category.
Lucky for me, I have lots of friends who fall in category one. Like my brother-in-law. He took my misbehaving bread machine and had it running like a humming bird thirty minutes later. (Uhh... whatever that phrase means. Is it real? You know what I meant, anyway.)
The moral of the story is: I had to make bruschetta, so (in the mean time) I baked two french loaves. Which weren't too shabby for my first time ever. I mean, look at that photo. Are you salivating? I am, and I'm not even hungry right now. Mmmm.
