Note to my readers (all 2 of you): There are a lot of  food and mommy bloggers that post some wonderful, well-executed, beautifully photographed recipes. This isn’t one of those blogs. For one, I am new to this whole SAHM thing and don’t have a whole lot of kitchen experience. Additionally, I am taking all of these photos one-handed on my iPhone, while holding my squirming little mister. I am not exactly a professional photographer either. Actually, not at all. What you will find here is my personal experiences trying out new recipes (or sometimes old ones if I get sick of failing miserably) and hopefully a few laughs. 

So I found this recipe for Buttery Bubble Bread on The Frugal Girl’s blog the other day. It looked amazing and fairly easy to do so I pinned it on Pinterest to my Eats board. Now sometimes I pin recipes that I will NEVER actually try. I’m just not that talented in the kitchen and sometimes I just like the picture. But when my super-generous mother-in-law bought us a brand new stand mixer, I knew there were no more excuses to not try my hand at baking some bread. Oh did I fail to mention I have NEVER baked bread before.

So I was having a particularily good morning with Camden. He had just woken up and was all cute, cuddly, and goobery.  I didn’t want to go for our walk quite yet because that is something I do with cranky Camden to put him to sleep. Happy Camden is an invitation for me to get stuff done. I immediately thought of the mixer and that bread recipe. I asked him if he wanted to bake bread with mommy and he goobered a little extra so I took that as a yes. I put him in his special sous-chef chair on the island, lugged the stand mixer over nearby him, and we started on step 1….

Step1: Dissolve 1 packet of yeast into 1 1/4 cups of warm water

Step 2: Add 1/2 cup sugar to the yeast mixture {baby spit optional}

Step 3: Stir in 1/4 cup of of melted butter. This is actually 3/4ths of a 1 lb size block of butter (not 1/4 cup) and yes I know it is NOT melted. I just like taking pictures of massive blocks of butter.

Step 4: add 1 egg

Step 5: add 1/2 tsp salt {look at the paddle go! weeee!}

Step 5 1/2: Add more baby spit...

Step 6: Add 1 cup flour and beat until smooth

So far so good. Maybe you are beginning to think that I’m not such a loser after all. Maybe you are right but here’s where things started to get messy…

The recipe calls for 4-4 1/2 cups of flour. Wait a second. Which is it, 4 cups or 4 1/2 cups? I can understand minor variances like a pinch of something or season to taste, but this is the main ingredient in a baking recipe Furthermore, the instructions say “add enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough”. Wait, the bread noob is supposed to be the judge of this? I have no clue what “soft dough” should look like!  There is zero time for panic, Camden’s fuss bomb could go off at any minute, so I squash my self-doubt and err on the side of caution. I add 3 more cups (remember I already put in one cup) figuring I will add more flour during the kneading process, if need be, since 1/2 cup isn’t that much.

Add enough of remaining flour to make a soft dough

I poured about 2 of the 3 cups of “remaining” flour into the mixer before switching from the flat beater attachment to the dough hook. Once the dough hook was in place, I added the last of the flour. It mixed into what looked like a soft dough so I started to attempt to move it to my floured surface. Of course, I put down way too much flour. I pictured the Frugal Girl behind me clucking about how I am wasting flour. I remind her that I am minus half a cup per the recipe and commence the kneading. Lordy what a mess! The stuff was sticking everywhere! On the side of the mixer, my “floured surface”, my hands! I am kneading, and kneading, and kneading but it looks NOTHING like the photo on the Frugal Girl’s blog . Crap.

So this is the mess that my "soft dough" made...

Of course by now my tiny sous-chef is starting turning into Mr Fussy Pants and I’m in a semi-panicked state because I have dough all over my hands. And I think they take away your mommy license if you get dough on the baby. I throw down some more flour but this time directly on the bread, like I do when I make my delicious flour-y cheese biscuits. I work furiously through the fussing and Praise the LORD it seems to work.

Not too polished but in the ballpark

Now this whole time, I am also using the original recipe from Tasteofhome.com. Frugal Girl has a lot of photos and I am getting the recipe from my iPhone so it’s just easier to follow Taste of Home’s version. The next step on Taste of Home’s site is: “place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top”. But Frugal Girl’s next step is simply “cover with a wet tea towel”. Hmmmm. Maybe Frugal Girl has baked a lot and knows that moist towels help the rising process. She seems to be pretty precise and expert in her domain. Yet I worry about the dough sticking too. So I decide to do both, Taste of Home does say to cover it, so I will cover it with the wet tea towel. I grease a bowl and place the dough in it and then flip it so that it’s nice and greasy on all sides. I have no freaking idea what a tea towel is but I do have a cool flour sack towel I bought from someone on Etsy. (I’m sure Frugal Girl will disapprove of this. I definitely overpaid and could have, no, should have,  just gotten a plain one. I probably could have purchased  a whole pack of flour sack towels and a couple of tea towels, whatever they are, for the same price. This is why you are broke she says. I am not very frugal I guess.) So I wet my overpriced flour sack towel and place it over the dough. Now that Frugal Girl is in my head, it occurs to me why there is a difference in her instructions. If there is anything I learned from reading her site, because I certainly didn’t learn how to be frugal, it is this: Frugal Girl is precise and exacting. She is a ninja of cost-cutting. She lives “cheerfully on less”. She would never waste expensive butter greasing a bowl when a wet tea towel will do the trick. Dang she’s good.

So now I feel like an idiot for wetting my flour sack but I carry on. At this point I am doing everything one handed as I hold Mr Nosy-Pants-Wiggle-Worm, who is happy now that he is on the mommy ride and can see everything.

My wasteful grease job

At this point there is nothing left to do but let the dough rise for an hour. I cover the dough with my now wet flour sack and decide to take my long walk route with Camden while the dough rises. Along my walk route, some man is giving out free limes so I take a few knowing that Frugal Girl would definitely approve. What does that have to do with the story you say?

Well….Actually…Nothing.

Limes Free

My long walk route is about an hour so I return home just in time to see this:

Gangsta!

Awwww yeeeeaaahhh! My dough HAS RISEN! Okay, I got this….

So the next step is to divide the dough into 48 pieces. 48 pieces. Whelp, good thing Camden is still snoozing from the walk! So I dive in, no time to waste, sleeping-baby-time is precious. The dough is still somewhat sticky so I silence my inner-Frugal Girl’s protests and dump small amounts of flour in my hand as I roll up the pieces. I get more like 40 but at this point I figure I’m just not going to do it as well as she did. Oh well. I feel the sudden urge to rebel against the constraints of this attempt at frugality. I don’t want to be exact. I may waste some shiz sometimes and, dang it, I like my cushy two-ply toilet paper and I use wipies sometimes too! Whew!

Anyhoo.

The recipe then says to dip the balls in 6 tbs  melted butter and arrange in a greased tube pan (or bundt). But Camden wakes up and I know he is hungry. So I feed him and he’s being all cute and cuddly afterwards, as per usual, so I forget about my baking for a while and indulge in decadent snuggling. <3 <3 <3

Ok,  I am back. And we are dipping balls in butter….

I recklessly slice another 1/4 cup off my brick o’butter without any regard for the recipe or exactness and melt it. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. I proceed to roll the balls in the butter and arrange them in the tube pan, no problems here. I run out of butter for the last 4 balls of dough and have to a little melt more. (As it turns out 1 cup=16 tbs so 1/4 cup=4 tbs). Probably more like 5 tbs is actually needed but Frugal Girl says to pour any remaining butter on top of the finished product. Even Frugal Girl can put aside her better sensibilities for the love of butter. Mmmmmmm….butter…

Golden buttery dough nuggets

Next, you cover the pan with the wet tea/flour sack towel and let the little balls rise for 30-45 minutes. I do this for 35 and no more. I’m over this shizz. I’m ready for my tasty reward.

I put the thing into my stove preheated to 350 degrees and set the timer for 30 minutes. Camden and I play for a while and come back often to watch it bake through the oven door. Look at that young padawan. Mommy is a freaking Jedi that can make milk and bake bread. 

After 30 minutes it is ready to come out. It looks amazing!

Yummers!

I pull it out with one hand because I have my padawan on my hip. Jedi Mommy decides she can handle this one-handed. Right. I flip the bundt pan over onto a plate and the bread slides out easy enough….then whooooooppppssss!!! The bread slides out too fast, hits the plate, and breaks into a million pieces. Okay more like 40 pieces. But you get my point.

Big. Fat. Whammy.

Really though, it was a perfect ending to my baking drama. Perfect.

Leaning Tower of Fail Biscuits

Almost immediately after this happened my husband called. He’s a first-responder and we are very in-tune so I’m sure he sensed my distress. When I told him what happened, he immediately asked “did you put the plate on top before you flipped it?”

Uhhhhhh…noooooo.  Dang.

So would anyone care for some pre-pulled-apart pull-apart bread? The answer is yes because it was still DER-LICIOUS!

Thank you Frugal Girl for sharing this awesome recipe and in tribute to your ninja-like cost-cutting skills, this is what we had for dinner:

Leftover Sloppy Joe mix on Buttery Bubble Bread. YUM!