Breakfast Soup and Dirt Bread

I can eat some weird stuff for breakfast, but can I eat a doughnut, a strudel, or a danish pastry? Not a chance. Bad things happen to me when those items are ingested first thing in the morning. I don't like to have leftovers hanging around in my refrigerator, so this morning my breakfast consisted of mashed sweet potatoes - made with my new handy-dandy potato ricer!

Look at it! Look at it!

To go with my mashed sweet potatoes, I had Italian Wedding Miso Soup. Let me explain. Leftover Italian wedding soup: not really soup anymore, but tiny pasta pearls + dry miso soup mix + boiling water = Italian Wedding Miso Soup. It was as bazaar as it sounds.

On the topic of food failures, let me show you my latest yeast disaster. I call it Dirt Bread! This recipe turned out so badly, I'm not even going to post it. I wanted to make some hearty, whole wheat bread because it looks like this outside:*Cue the blood curdling scream*

This recipe came from Germany, or it at least tried to. My very good friend, Katharina, sent me a recipe for her mom's delicious rye bread. Katharina is very kind, so she converted some of the measurements for me. A wonderful thought, but I think something went wrong during the converting. Also, the recipe called for "half a piece of yeast". I didn't know what the hell that meant, so I just put in 1 Tablespoon full of dry active yeast. The liquid to flour ratio looked reeeeeally off, so I was just winging it for the most part. As you can see from the above photo, it's a very grainy dough. I liked that. I wanted this to be the first time my whole wheat dough didn't taste like dirt, but I didn't get my way. *Sigh*

Lookin' good here. I was getting good vibes from the bread at this point.

Still feeling good just before the second rise.

And then I hit the wall. Whole wheat yeast bread, why do you look like crap? Did I let you proof for too long or do you normally look like that?

I pressed on, even taking the care to brush my little uglies with egg white before baking. They look nice and shiny, but don't let their exterior fool you.

Too flat. Too much dirt flavor. Seriously folks, I put a bite of this beast in my mouth, and it was like gnawing on wheat straight from the field. Do you have any suggestions on how/why this bread tastes like it's just been unearthed? I look forward to your hypothesis.

*UPDATE***THE NEXT DAY*

After sleeping off some steam, I gave the ol' dirt bread another chance. I popped one of the slices into my toaster and lathered the warm, crispy slice with butter. And you know, it really was not that bad! I believe that the toasting brought out a nutty flavor from the whole grains, and, of course, butter makes everything better. Well, dirt bread, maybe you're not so terrible after all.

This is why I bake cookies.

I love bread. I love all forms of it; all types and shapes and flavors. I love to make bread, or I should say, I love to TRY to make bread. I've got the quick breads down: pumpkin bread, applesauce bread, zucchini bread, cinnamon bread, etc. Those are no problem at all. But when yeast is involved, that's another story. Yeast, why do you toy with me so? It is an unrequited love, the yeast and me. I finally had some spare time last week to do one of my favorite activities: baking homemade yeast bread. I love purusing through my collection of recipes, searching for the perfect one to make. I decided on a whole wheat bread that called for bran, flax, and wheat germ. Sounded good to me. Here's the loaf before the first rise. Doesn't look too bad....

Still looking good just before the second rise....

Looking pretty good after the second rise....

...and then they look like total crap after baking. They sunk and got too brown. Yeast bread gods, have you any mercy?

I'd say that this is the typical outcome of my breads. Pseudo ok, but mostly blah. It makes decent toast. I'll be having this toast for breakfast for the next three months. Almond butter, anyone?