Accidental Cinnamon Rolls

Chad has to leave for work at 7 AM now. That is not a kind hour. We have to wake up the kids and bring them to the living room for prayer, then he leaves me sitting there in a stupor with 5 sleepy kids. From there we circle the table and wake up while eating breakfast. Ugh.

But since my day starts at 7 and there is no going back to bed until after lunch, I can get a few more things done. (I said I can, I didn't say I do.) Yesterday I decided to make bread. We were on our last loaf. At 7:30 I was dumping wheat into the grinder and gathering the ingredients I would need. I pulled out a couple of measuring cups and my measuring spoon that measures 2 Tablespoons at once. I love that! I planned to have the bread in the oven to raise by 8 and hop into the shower.

I get the 6 cups of hot water into the mixer and add some freshly ground and still warm wheat flour. Then I add the yeast, dough enhancer and gluten. The recipe calls for 2T of each. I am used to using my regular 1T spoon, although I have had this 2T measuring spoon since Christmas. So I scooped twice. Are you following along? I now have 4T of yeast, dough enhancer and gluten for 6 loaves of bread.

My brain finally catches up. GREAT! Now what to do? The lazy part of me said, throw it out and start over. The poor part of me said, that would be wasteful! So I kept going. Now it's still pretty early in the morning, you will recall. I'm not thinking clearly. But I do wish that the Bosch mixer would hold 12 cups of water and 30+ cups of flour. It would have been easier and cleaner. Alas, as the watery dough came slopping out of the bowl, I realized that I would have to do this in shifts.

I had to wash a mixing bowl to dump the excess into! GASP! I hadn't planned on doing dishes, especially by hand. But apparently, this isn't going to be a normal morning. As one half of the yeasty mixture sat and bubbled away in the extra bowl, I tried to continue as normal with the rest. By now, there is goop and white flour all over the counter. More work I hadn't planned on. I finished that batch and dumped it onto the table. Oops...forgot the salt in that batch.

The next batch seemed drier than the first. That figures. I'll be lucky if any of this mess even tastes good. I dumped the 2nd batch of dough (this one is salted) onto the first. Enough dough for 12 loaves of bread makes a really big mound! I have extra large bread pans, so I usually only get 5 loaves. This time, I was able to get 5 really big, extra large loaves! I slid them into my warmed oven to raise. I figured it would take all day with the trauma that was involved.

Now I'm out of bread pans. So the rest of the dough is going to be cinnamon rolls. Won't Chad be happy my morning fell so completely apart? I pulled out my ingredients for that. I was going to keep it simple...butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and coconut. Whoops! That's not the cinnamon! It's not a good thing that the cinnamon and taco seasoning containers are so similar. What if I hadn't caught it in time? Is there such a thing as Mexican "Cinnamon" Rolls? Thanks for the funny treat, Mommy. Please don't make any more, por favor.

I got 40+ large cinnamon rolls and a small pan of rolls out of the remaining dough. They were a big hit. Joseph kept saying, "mmmm" while he ate his. Everyone got at least 2 yesterday.

The bread rose a lot faster than I expected. I didn't give it much care as I rolled it up and threw it into the pans, so it didn't come out looking very pretty. Oh well, it's not going to last long enough to enter any contests anyway.

I was sweating by the time I got done. And then I had to clean up the disaster area. I may not make bread for the rest of this pregnancy. I'm just too lazy for such adventures! I did eventually get my shower...2 hours later than planned. Better late than never, right?