Day 15: Loafing Around (3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days)

Loafing around? No, it's not what you think.

I baked a loaf of bread today.

And I finally got smart and tried out my old mixer to see if it would knead bread dough. It's definitely not a KitchenAid, but it worked well enough for the amount of dough I had. (Thanks, Toni and Kate for suggesting I try it!)

But even though the mixer did knead the dough for me, it wasn't entirely hands free. The mixer is so small that when I turned it up much higher than its lowest speed, the mixer nearly vibrated itself off the counter. So I ended up standing there with my hands on the mixer, holding it in place. But at least I didn't have to do the kneading—just the holding.

I was a little afraid that I'd messed up the yeast again, because the recipe I used said to let the dough rise for about 40 minutes until it had doubled in size—but after 40 minutes, my dough had hardly risen!

But I had faith. And I even thought I probably should have just let it rise for longer—I was in a bit of a time crunch because of our evening activities—I went ahead and put it in the loaf pan and let it rise a "second" time. But this time I stuck it in the oven with a bowl of hot water and by the time I checked it again an hour later, it had risen sufficiently.

I baked it for 40 minutes and here's how it turned out!

And it was completely gone in about 15 minutes.

Make sure you head on over to Kate’s and Toni’s blogs to see what’s happening in their kitchens. And don’t forget about this tomorrow’s “3 Moms” online discussion. If you’d like to have us email you an invitation to the discussion so you can click directly into our call from your email, please leave a comment on this post with your email address. Otherwise, just join us this Friday, May 16th at 10 PM Eastern Time by clicking this link.