Walnut-Filled Bread

AKA Where You Goin' With That Flour?

OR What a Colossal Fucking Waste of Time

Look, I got this hand mixer on Tuesday, and I was basically trying not to spend any money til Friday when, you know, I was planning to get some money. So I chose the one thing that I had to buy the least amount of shit for. It was this loaf of bread with some walnuts baked in, and you braid the bread. I just needed some yeast (about $2) and some apple jelly (about $2).

I apparently also needed a fucking Pope-sanctioned miracle, a stove that doesn't suck, and a team of cooks to make sure I didn't fuck this up.

What I got was a 4-hour long ordeal that I never want to go through again. This is gonna be quick, kids. I've been putting off posting this for four days because I'm still pretty pissed about this.

Look! Very active yeast! (Very active yeast reminds me of very active politicians [feel free to insert your own fucking joke here. I'm serious. I hated this stupid bread. I hated it so much that I can't even pretend to make jokes when I'm typing about it.])



The apple jelly I bought was very interesting to the 16 year old who rang up my order. She was pretty impressed with how you could see right through it. The people at that store are pretty nice to me, even though I give them every reason to think I'm an escapee from the psych ward that's not too far from here, so I'm not going to make fun of her. Anyhow. Jelly:



And look, I used the mixer on the dough:



And the dough would not stop sucking up more and more flour. Every time I put the damn flour away I had to get it back out to make the dough not be a sticky, runny mess. I fucking hated it. Serious. Here is the before:



And the after:



I was pretty pissed off by this point, so after I let it rise for the prescribed amount of time, I tried to cheer myself up:



Apparently I succeeded in pissing off the dough. The dough and I were not friends at this point, we were mortal enemies locked in combat to the fucking death.

Anyhow. Stuffed it with the walnut stuffing:



Ran out of walnut stuffing:



And improvised:



(If you have to ask why the fat girl who is trying to quit smoking has a seemingly endless supply of Reese's peanut butter cups, you should be commended on your ability to navigate The Internet all on your own.)

Braided the nut-filled bread:



Made the other two strips of nut-filled bread into my first initial, in my futile attempt to make the bastard shit dough bow down and obey me:



The balls of dough are the ones with the Reese's cups inside.

So I set my oven for whatever the book said, and set the timer for 20 minutes. The book said to bake it for 30, but cover it with foil for the last ten minutes, so I set it for 20 "no-foil" minutes. This part basically still pisses me off.

I came back 20 minutes later and my bread looked like this:



Fuck you, dough. Fuck you. You too, stupid oven. You conspirital bastards. Fuck.

So anyhow the Reese's balls were gross, the nut bread braid was gross, and I threw the whole thing out. Damn. The bread was cooked through, but it tasted gross. It tasted like if you have a mouth full of stale, generic white bread and a mouthful of rotten walnuts. Fucking nasty. It looked good, though:



But damn. Damn.

Lesson learned: A "scant" tablespoon (of the nut mixture) means a not-full tablespoon. Also, dough is an asshole.