I remember reading where Jill Cooper (www.livingonadime.com) said if you make a pie crust every day for a month, you'll become an expert crust maker because you'll make every mistake it is possible to make. I've been making bread daily for about three weeks now using an automatic bread machine, and for the first time this morning I neglected to put the dough hook back in the machine before adding my ingredients. The machine had been sitting for forty minutes before I realized, from another room, that the hook was missing. I then compounded the error by turning the machine off before dumping all of the sodden ingredients into a ceramic bowl. If I had taken the time to look at the machine first I would have seen that there was a pausing option.
Maybe it will turn out okay. The thing that worries me is that I am using a wheat bread recipe, and the wheat cycle just sits there for the first half hour of running, and then it combo mixes and bakes for another four hours (!). Is my yeast, now untimely mixed with warm water, going to go crazy before the mixing cycle begins? I don't know what that half hour of sitting is for, or why the bread rises so much the first time before being pounded down by the second kneading cycle. Some reading on the matter is required. It would be good to know these things, and perhaps one of you can explain them to me, even if only for the sake of my children knowing something about food that may come in handy some day.
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