Dumbo the Accidental Baker - #4: Various Misses Before the Eventual Success

It was bruised ego rather than perseverance, I think, that made me continue to churn out load after load (or rather, loaf after loaf) of failed breads. :-) I eventually got it right (to an acceptable extent), but here below are some of my "notable" failures before the final success:

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#1: Chocolate Bun Wannabes

The chunks of chocolate on top of the buns was the only useful "discovery" here...



They were edible - and we did finish eating them, eventually - but the texture was still rather dense.

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#2: What Happened to the Leftover

Remember the leftover from the previous post? This happened to it. :-)



It looked really interesting as it was taken out of the oven.

Then the texture just collapsed after I cut it into slices.


The taste of the sweet potato was not very obvious. But the chunks of lotus seeds were interesting.

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#3: The Nutty Seven



Verdict: Again, too dense; and somehow, the almond chunks were not very tasty.

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#4: The Seedy Character

I discovered pumpkin seeds at the baking supply store. Wonderful stuff for men, particularly their prostate glands. :-p



Again, this looked good fresh out of the oven.

But - again - it collapsed under the knife. This prompted me to get a real bread knife later.


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#5: Quasimodo

It started out looking "normal".


But actually, the lump of dough you see in the picture above was not a spherical piece of dough. It had been rolled into a thick "rope" and then twisted into a "heap".

So, it rose into a weird shape...



I actually ate most part of it. The rest, well, it's another story, for later. :-)

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#6: The Not-to-be Banana Buns

Being unhappy - extremely unhappy - with my previous attempt at the "Banana Clouds", I made another attempt at introducing banana to the dough.


Well, it was again unsuccessful, and what became of them - most of them anyway - was another story, for later (together with Quasimodo).

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#7: The Half Success

I just bought a couple of pound-cake/loaf trays, and I decided to make a small chocolate loaf for my wife's breakfast.



The mistake I made was that I put the tray this time on the bottom rack (because I felt that for the previous attempts, the bottom part of the loaf/bun tended to be less "cooked", if you know what I mean), and it charred the bottom of the loaf. :-(


But the top was delicious! (After cutting away the charred bottom half, that is.) And the texture was kind of soft - almost the way I had been wanting it to be.


And what made it doubly delicious was the chunks of chocolate I just simply rolled inside the dough. It was especially yummy when it was still steaming hot from the oven, as the chocolate would be in this melted state that just filled up your whole mouth with its tastiness. Yum!


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#8: The Failure Before the Success

The chocolate half-success above was made with one cup of flour. This one here used one and a half. It was still not enough to fill the tray (even after rising). I would later discovered that it takes two cups of flour to make a loaf large enough to fill the tray.





Other than being too small (not filling up the tray), this was again not yet a success because the texture was still dense. :-(

As the bad guys in cartoons are wont to say: I'll get you next time!