Brot, as you found out in a previous post, is bread. Two guesses as to what “Katastrophe” means. Yep.

CATASTROPHE!!!!!!!!!!

I was so excited to follow up on my bread-making success from last week that I tried again this weekend, only to find out that my previous accomplishment was only the result of… I shudder even to write the words… beginner’s luck.

Oh, the shame. Oh, the humanity. Oh… the bread.

Last week’s version of bread was super delicious, but I had a few ideas for improvement: cooking at a slightly higher temperature, using wheat flour instead of white, adding seeds, and not using as much flour on the outside. Last time, I used a ton of flour to help pick up the dough ball because it was really sticky, but that meant there was all this flour all over when you were trying to eat it.

It was a disaster practically all the way through. I was so excited about my new and improved bread, but when I dumped the dough out of the bowl and onto the towel, it spread like instant pudding that hasn’t set yet instead of staying clumped together!! The HORRORS!!! So then I had to add more flour to make it become dough instead of pancake batter, which meant I had to KNEAD THE NO-KNEAD BREAD! More horrors!!! Then, convinced that I had finally remedied a bad situation, I started cooking it. No problem there, everything’s going well, bread bakes, and then… (can you guess what happens next?)…

I can’t get the bread out of the damn pot.

My bread is stuck, stuck, stuck.

I didn’t put any flour on the bottom of the pot because I’m an idiot, and now the bread is firmly baked onto the bottom of the pot. My kitchen, the Katastrophengebiet. Tears everywhere. Giant sobs. Rending of hair. The whole nine yards.

So now what to do? I have tried, mmm, just about everything. Including trying to put oil into the pot to loosen it up. Another harebrained idea that has resulted only in making the crust soggy. I am now faced with the ultimate and tragic solution: tearing the bread with my bare hands to get it out of the pot. I don’t know if I will survive this mission. It might just take too much out of me. And the waste of the bread! Cut down at the very blossoming of its wheat-and-seed filled life! Oh me.

This is what the bread looked like when I finally sliced and tore it out of its pot. Not so bad. And covered with seeds!

Edible after all.

And then I mangiare-d it with my mom’s homemade strawberry jam that she sent to me via my sister Beth. Mmmmm breakfast.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.