When you forget the yeast
May 6, 2010 by Jenn @ Frugal Upstate
Filed under Frugal Food
. . .your bread doesn’t rise. Yes, adding the yeast is necessary to make the bread rise, and forgetting is a bad, bad thing.
*Sigh*
What to do? Sometimes life is full of more accidents than successes-and sometimes you are just happy to salvage things.
On Monday I did my regular routine to bake two loaves of bread. I always measure out all the ingredients for both loaves at once-then throw the first one in the bread machine to get it going while the second set (divided in two bowls by wet & dry) waits on the counter. It was a pretty warm humid day, so I didn’t measure the yeast out for the second batch. (Note: I’m not sure this actually makes any difference, but I figured I’d err on the safe side. Hah!)
You guessed it, when I chucked everything into the bread machine for the second batch I totally forgot to add the yeast-a fact I didn’t realize until the yeas-tless bread dough had been attempting to rise for 40 minutes in the oven with no success.
I hate throwing away food, so I really wanted to salvage the dough. I didn’t think I could add the yeast in at the end and re-knead it. . . so I decided to experiment.
I had pulled out some frozen leftover ham (Easter Honey Ham to be specific) that I was going to create SOMETHING out of for dinner. These are the perils of not making a menu plan-I had no idea what we were going to eat.
I rolled out the failed bread dough on my cookie sheet, sprinkled it with Parmesan cheese and pepper and baked it for about 12 minutes at 350.
Ok, that doesn’t look too bad. I decided to go with a pizza type format, and yet not a pizza~sort of a riff on a ham and cheese sandwich. I like my ham sandwiches with mustard-but I thought that spreading the entire crust with mustard would be too much, so I mixed a heaping spoon (probably about a 1/4 c) of mayo with my Dijon mustard and then spread it on the “crust”. I sprinkled a little bit of Thyme on top of that-just because it seemed like it would go.
Usually I make my ham sandwiches with plain old American cheese. I dug around in the fridge to see if I had some slices I could throw on, but wouldn’t you know-I was out. I did have a bag of shredded cheddar cheese, so I tossed a bit of that on there. Then continuing with the sandwich theme I sliced up several plum tomatoes and laid them on.
Lastly I chopped up the ham and sprinkled it over the top along with another round of fresh black pepper.
Baked it at 400 for about 20 minutes and viola:
Honestly? I think it came out looking and smelling gorgeous!
Taste-wise?
Well, it was ok. Yes-just OK.
This was not a culinary triumph.
The taste combination was good-I enjoyed it, as did Yankee Bill and the Kiddos. But the “crust” was just too dense and chewy on the top and then a bit crunchy on the bottom. The mayo/mustard combo gave a nice flavor, but it soaked into the dough and added to that gummy texture. It was edible, but it wasn’t something we’d want to replicate on purpose.
But it enabled me to salvage something I would otherwise have thrown away~while it may not have been a culinary triumph, to me it was a frugal triumph!
The moral of this story? There are two. #1-A mistake isn’t the end of the world-instead of tossing it into the trash, take a minute and think about what else you can use your “mistake” for. #2- Remember, sometimes the best you can hope for is “ok” and “edible”.
