Redeeming the Bread

Bug's favorite excuse is "I got distracted." While he's a highly distractible sort of Hobbit, it does get old after a bit. It's sort of a contagious variety of excuse, since I'm hearing it from other members of the clan besides Bug. Tool Guy trots it out from time to time, to my cynical sneers. Oh, the hubris...

Sunday mornings are not an oasis of quiet and reflection in the midst of a hurly-burly week. As much as it pains me and as it is humbling to admit, Sunday mornings = stress in this Hobbit hole. Two hours is barely sufficient time to organize and corral five people out of the house in a tranquil and pacifistic manner. That's what the commute is for...regrouping and refocusing after the mad dash out the door. It's like herding cats.

I really should know better than to try and squeeze in any other activity than the ones required to get us out the door for the morning. I really should. It should be enough to feed and dress everyone, organize snacks, collect up textbooks, music materials, and sermon notes. Watching us leave must look like a troupe of Hobbits breaking bivouac. But for some reason or another, it seemed like a reasonable, rational, nay, even possible goal to get a loaf of bread going in the morning before we left. The theory was that if I set the bread to rising--my starter is sluggish of late and needs more rise time than previous--when I first got up, I could set the timer for the rest of the rise, the oven would turn on, bake the bread, then turn off, patiently waiting for our return home a few hours later. It makes a nice theory, doesn't it?

Half way down the road, it came to me that I'd never set the timer. Nothing for it but to sit in the passenger's seat and fume over the wasted product. Okay. Breathe deep. The rest of the drive involved my mind furiously shifting through ways to salvage the situation.

Redemption Muffins

2 cups of flopped bread dough
1 cup pear butter or apple sauce
1 cup dry quinoa flakes
2 t cinnamon
1 T vinegar
1 t baking soda

When I got home the dough, nestled in its 100* oven, had risen and fallen with a lovely layer of froth over the top. It was quite liquid, too. Hence, the addition of dry quinoa flakes. This may appear an arbitrary ingredient to add and, indeed, it is. The theory was that the dry flakes would soak up the extra moisture. Besides, the flakes were part of a cereal that the Hobbits swore that they loved, but really what they loved was to pick the dried mangoes and strawberries out and leave the hideously expensive quinoa flakes behind with a sneer. Soooo. One cup of dry quinoa flakes it is.

I think that I now passionately adore vinegar and baking soda as a rising agent, since stumbling across a cake recipe recently that called for this combination. Betty Crocker look out. So I now use it instead of the much pricier cream of tartar. But just to keep things interesting, I've taken to using cane vinegar, courtesy of our local international grocery store, since it has a sweeter and more mild taste than other vinegars and is a more palatable addition to dessert breads.

Mix ingredients and pour into muffin molds, baking at 350* for 30 minutes.

Dog, who has of late turned his nose up at such humble offerings as pear butter muffins, inhaled these and declared them the best he's ever tried. Figures. Now I have to go and engineer a deliberate mistake...