. . .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”.
If this happens again, you might try kneading in a teaspoon of baking powder. It works for biscuits.
One other thing. Now first I’ll admit that I would have tried to “save” this one, too. But for me it’s more about the time already invested. And the fact that if I’ve got bread rising, odds are I’ve got a dinner planned around it and don’t have time to start over.
But as far as saving money, how much do the ingredients in bread dough really cost? A couple of cups of flour, some salt, and water? For the sake of saving twelve cents worth of flour, do you risk ruining two dollars worth of ham and cheese?
Well, you aren’t the only one that has done that, I have missed ingredients in the past too. Glad you were able to salvage it though.
I had to chuckle because I made a cooking mistake earlier this week too. I made a double-batch of banana bread – one loaf to take to school for the teacher appreciation breakfast and one for home. I’ve made the recipe so many times, and I was multi-tasking and also making dinner. I forget to put in the oil. Granted, the recipe doesn’t have a lot of oil, but the bit that it does call for was forgotten by me. My hubby & son thought our loaf still tasted good – a little drier than normal, but still good. So it went to school anyway for the teacher-appreciation breakfast – and we just called it “low fat banana bread.”
🙂
Alice
I accidentally turned the pasta water off the other night instead of to high. Soggy whole wheat pasts = UGH.
I’d have tried to save it too – for the 12 cents of flour 🙂
Well done – sounds like how I throw things together sometimes in a cooking fumble.
Good story. You know, I almost wonder if there isn’t a philosophical musing to this. In life where are we trying to rescue things when we’ve left out the yeast, and should we try to patch things up or just toss it and start afresh?
My failed bread rolls happened on Christmas Day when we had guests coming over. I wanted to toss the flat rolls by my Dear Husband tasted one and like them. I served them to our guests calling them Jesus Bread because they were unleven, perfect for Christmas Day if you think about it. To this day I still like to recreate my Jesus Bread for christmas by using less yeast and we all get a little chuckle.
Since I google every question I decided to ask the question of what to do if you forget the yeast and came up with you. Here is what I did and I’ve done it before too multitasking or getting interupted. I looked at my nice warm foccacia dough in the bowl and decided I could fix it. I sprinkled one tablespoon of instant yeast over the top, poured a little bit of warm water on it and began to massage in with my hand, put in a warm spot and in no time my dough was rising as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary. What a victory, yah I’m frugal too.