The Kitchen Oopsies

You know how you buy something you think you know, but then end up with the wrong thing?

Yeah, that happened to me. First time it happened in Germany, we were looking for baking powder and bought yeast. Nothing that broke the bank, but... Well, now we have yeast. Oops.

Then I asked Boyfriend to bring home some chocolate to bake something with. I occasionally forget people don't know everything I know. Such as that milk chocolate alone is not a good ingredient to make brownies or chocolate cake with. I didn't have the heart to tell him, so I let it be. I mean, it's chocolate. No  woman in her right mind complains about her man coming home with chocolate unless it's for another woman, she has allergies or it's a huge stain on a silk item of clothing. So we have about half a kilo of milka milk chocolate. Oops.

Then I made an oopsie. I thought a storage jar would hold a kilo of flour. It held about 800 grams. 200 grams of flour, mere days after I found out what happens if you don't store it in a dry, dark place, away from... Well, your own kitchen. Oops.

So I had to use up the flour. As soon as possible. What could I make?

I opened my new baking book  and came up with bread. Yeast, flour... I could even throw in some chocolate chunks for extra tastiness. What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, famous last words.

The dough went easily enough. Then throw in chocolate, no problem. Let it rise for forty minutes in the sunshine, under a towel, easy as pie.

But then I baked it, and it went horribly wrong.

You see, milka chocolate chunks aren't heat resistant chocolate drops like your baker uses. And bread bakes a lot longer than, say, chocolate chip cookies. So it melted and burned all over the crust of the  bread and the baking paper.

Oh, and I used regular flour instead of bread flour, and quite possibly not enough yeast and salt. The bread was dense and flavorless except for where a few chocolate bits had gotten protected by the dough. The protected bits tasted like heaven.

So I've learned from this. Use enough yeast. And salt. And the right flour. And protect your filling from heat unless otherwise indicated. Oh, and next time, bake a cake. Even if it means going to the store and maybe coming back with salted butter instead of regular.