The Stork Has Dropped Some Precious Cargo!

It's here! It's here! :-) Yea!!! The stork has dropped some precious cargo on our doorstep! IT'S A ......









.....BOSCH! It arrived Friday via UPS (the "stork"), and it is beautiful! See pic. below.

Being the detailed person that I am, I was reading the manual first before using it (after all, that is what it says you're supposed to do! And I didn't want to miss anything important!), so I didn't get around to using it Friday evening. Jeremy didn't get home until late that night and wouldn't have been around for the FIRST USE anyway.

Well, Jeremy, being the "I don't need to read the instructions; I already know what to do" kind of man that he is, while I was still reading the manual Saturday morning, went ahead and got the blender out and started at it. I did at least catch him quickly enough to stop him to wash it first, since the instructions said to do that. Well, below are the pics of OUR FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH OUR NEW BABY! ;-)

(Please excuse our messy kitchen!
At least SOME of it was from the smoothies and the bread to be.)

You can tell Jacob liked the smoothie! :-)

So Saturday evening I began MY first use of my new Bosch! Jeremy just couldn't stand to let me do it. He was too impatient with my methodicalness, so he ended up helping and kind of taking over a bit at the end. He was telling me to dump the flour in faster, and I said I was trying not to make a mess and have it poor on top of the splatter guard. So he took over and did it faster, only to have it spill on top of the splatter guard and outside of the bowl a little.

Then a little later when we were adding some more flour, he suggested that we really didn't need the splatter guard on it anymore. Again, I told him what the manual said--that you should always have the splatter guard in place when running the machine. I also told him it was there for a reason and what happens without it because I've had it happen to me before. He was insistent that at that point we didn't need it. I should have let him be the one standing in front of the machine while he added the flour with it running without the splatter guard. I was actually kind of hoping that he would get the opportunity to see what happens; I just didn't think about me being the recipient of it. Well, I'm sure by now you can guess what happened. (Sorry, I didn't think to get a pic of it, but it really wasn't as bad as it could have been.)

Anyway... sure enough, flour flew everywhere, specifically all over me, hence the reason I should have had HIM standing there! We laughed and quickly put the splatter guard back on. I think he learned his lesson... maybe... until the next time he decides not to listen to me or the instructions for something. He is a guy after all! (No offense to any of you guys who might be reading this blog; it is rather stereotypical of guys to not ask directions, you know.) Here's the bowl after taking the dough out:




When it came time, Jeremy started forming and shaping the loaves, as he had pretty well taken over my job at this point. I did get to form one loaf myself! :-) (And I kind of helped with another.) Then I had to leave for a baby shower, so Jeremy got to see it through to the end, and he got to try it first, fresh out of the oven! So here's the final product:

And this is the one loaf I did myself:

And here are a couple of the YUMMY toasted cheese and turkey sandwiches we had for lunch today, made with our YUMMY homemade bread:

As I'm sure you could tell, there is room for improvement in the "Beautiful Loaf" category. I liked the crust better today, as it seemed to have softened up some in the bags. The taste was good, though, and it seemed to hold together okay. Though there is room for improvement, we will have plenty of opportunities to experiment, try out different recipes, and perfect our shaping. All in all, I'd say it wasn't too bad for our first attempt. And as much as I joked about Jeremy taking over and not following the instructions, he really does have a clue what he's doing, having grown up in a house with 7 sisters who were all taught by their mother how to make bread, and I really did appreciate his help. So, thank you, Jeremy! :-) (Now I just need to try out my slicer/shredder and my cookie paddles.)

Anyone want some homemade bread? Come on over! :-)