Have you ever not read directions carefully enough? I think rushing through directions and making assumptions is my forte. It is also the easiest and likely most common downfall of a novice baker.

From what I gather, a cook can miss things in a recipe, and it can still turn out alright, just different. With baking you can miss a tiny little thing, and all can go caput. Where cooking is art, baking is science. I like to think of myself as a fair blend of the two approaches, but with my interest in baking at the moment, and other areas of measurement and quantification in my life, I am definitely leaning more scientist these days.

In my continual journey to create the perfect wholemeal sandwich loaf, I found a pretty decent recipe from Peter Reinhart, tweaked it a bit, and then ignored the fact that it was for TWO loaves of bread. Thus, the giant mushroom cloud of loaf.

It was still delicious, and had some interesting crusty bits in the exploded portion, but it was hardly sandwich worthy.

Now I definitely read the recipes more carefully. And repeatedly. And often rewrite them in shorthand. Lesson learned.