A Bread Disaster

Last week I was out walking my little dog, Lizzie, and we passed by a "secret" bakery. It was tucked away in a row of warehouses, with no sign on the door or anything to cause you to know that it was there. Except for the wonderful smell. And, as it happened, the back loading bay was open and we could see dozens of loaves of bread on cooling racks.

Well, that inspired me to come home and do a little bread making. I had the idea of making a chocolate, apricot swirl loaf. I didn't have a recipe, just an idea. And, I've been baking bread for over twenty years, so no problem, right. Wrong!

I dug out a recipe for a yummy oatmeal bread. After the first rise, I rolled it out, spread a cup of jam over it, sprinkled it with miniature chocolate chips, rolled it up and put it in a loaf pan to rise again. Then I baked it until it was golden brown and sounded hollow when thumped. When it finally cooled enough to cut into...Disaster! It had not actually cooked all the way through. The outside was perfect, but the entire middle was a slump of sticky, messy, gooey dough. It was such a huge disappointment! We picked at it a little, but ended up giving most of it to the chickens!