The Attempted Murder of a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and a Bread not to be Repeated.

I almost killed my most prized possession on Saturday night: my KitchenAid Professional 5 quart stand mixer.

I wept. Seriously. It could have cost me $400 or more to replace my beauty. And I don't have $400 right now.

After unplugging and removing Silver Streak (her nickname since she can beat egg whites and whip cream at lighting speed) to the cool tile, to do just that, cool down.

Potential Disaster #1: In the mean time I had to knead my 5 1/2 lbs of bread dough by hand. I will admit it was a lot of dough, but SS should have been able to handle it. I began recalculating my measurements. What did I miss? My recipe is in the metric system, and when I doubled it, I forgot to add the equivalent of four ounces of water. That's a half cup. And that's a lot of water in bread dough.

So, it took me an hour to knead and incorporate that additional water by hand plus the other half cup of flour my recipe required. Are you kidding me? It was already midnight when Silver Streak died.

Potential Disaster #2: After I finally kneaded it to its proper consistency (windowpane test), I let it rise. I should have put it in the fridge at this point. Nope, I didn't.

I checked Silver Streak, still nothing.

After it fermented, I punched the dough down, formed it into three loaves, putting two in the freezer, but then I forgot to place the last loaf in the fridge for a night of rising. You see, I was just so excited! I had plugged in SS again, and although she didn't sound great, she was working.

So, by the time I came back down stairs the in the morning, my bread had over proofed. The only remedy I could think of was to remove it from the loaf pan, brush off as much cornmeal as possible, punch it down and reshape it. I let it relax for about 20 minutes before reshaping and rolling it out again for the loaf pan. I again set it to proof.

And you're not going to believe this, but not only did Silver Streak work, I even made oatmeal cookies with her. Yes, I do feel a little guilty to make her work so hard again after almost killing her.

Potential Disaster #3: The bread was taking forever to proof. After two hours, I had to leave. Not just leave for a little while, but for a day-long trip. What was I going to do? I wrapped it up, loaf pan and all, and placed it in the freezer.

Potential Disaster #4: Now I didn't have any bread for my daughter's lunch on Monday. But the disaster was avoided by the school lunch program. Fortunately, hot lunch was soft tacos (one of my daughter's favorites).

Saved! After taking the bread out of the freezer Sunday night after returning home, I put the it in the refrigerator to defrost slowly. I didn't take dough out again until Monday afternoon. The dough took four hours to warm up and finish proofing. I crossed my fingers after placing it in the oven.

Thirty minutes later I had a perfect loaf of bread. After letting it cool overnight, I sliced into it this morning. It tasted as perfect as it looked. Although knowing that a bread that rises slowing has better flavor, I thought I might have pushed the limits this time. You see, when dough is allowed to sit and rest, yeast cells are able to enjoy themselves immensely, and this allows them impart a wonderful flavor into the bread. However, I will not be following this exact method again. At least I hope not!