Baking Disasters

Is it a bread or is it a roll? Within this layery monstrosity is the essence of fatty deliciousness. Doom Bread combines bacon, cheese and vast quantities of butter into a single object, which amazingly fits in the palm of your hand.

The Recipe

• 1 bottle mead per baker
• 1 packet of active yeast
• 1 1/2 sticks salted butter
• 6 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
• 1 large egg
• 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 lb bacon
• 1/2 cup oil packed sun dried tomatoes
• 1/2 lb mozzarella
• 1 1/2 cups grated parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1/2 tsp chili powder

1. Dump half of the butter into a microwave safe dish and microwave it until it's melted. Set it aside to let it cool.
2. In a large bowl mix the flower, salt, oregano and basil. Set aside.
3. In a different somewhat smaller but still largeish bowl, stir the yeast into the sugar. Add the egg and stir as you add the water. Mix thoroughly.
4. Once that the butter is cool, stir that into the sugary mixture.
5. Grab a glass of mead and wait for the mixture to foam up. This takes about five minutes.
6. Stir the foamy sugary mixture into the original large bowl with the flower in it.
7. Mix and then knead the dough for a few minutes. Set the dough aside to rise. This will take about an hour. Drink more mead.
8. Dice the tomatoes.
9. Dice the bacon and fry it up pretty crispy. Remove the bacon from the grease and mix it with the tomatoes.
10. Pour the warm bacon grease over the remaining butter in a small bowl.
11. Mix the garlic salt, parmesan cheese and chili powder in yet another bowl.
12. Cut the mozzarella into 10 pieces. Roll each piece of mozzarella in bacon being sure to use less than half.
13. Cut the risen dough into as many equal pieces as you have pieces of mozzarella.
14. Flatten each piece of dough and wrap it around a piece of mozzarella. Squish each sphere tightly to seal it.
15. Dunk each sphere into the buttery greasy mixture, roll it in the bacon, and then roll it in the cheese mixture.
16. Put all of the rolls on to a cookie sheet. If you have any extra grease, bacon or cheese, put it on top of the rolls. Let them rise for another hour. Pour another glass of mead.
17. At some point during this hour, preheat your oven to 350.
18. Bake for 20-30 minutes until golden brown.

The Attempt

The vast list of ingredients for this recipe required too much shopping for any of the baking team to bother with. We divided up ingredients amongst ourselves before we met to meet our doom. This strategy was only partially successful as several bakers canceled at the last minute. We ended up making some careful substitutions to close this gap.

Where the recipe calls for parmesan we substituted shredded cheddar that was left over from the previous nights taco party. Where bacon was required, we substituted low fat spam. Having accepted our fate we mixed the ingredients, loaded them into the oven and prepared for the worst. As it turns out, we were able to fit the entire batch into the oven making this an all or nothing experiment.

Fearing that the baking doom bread would summon demons, we retired to the lounge for a final round of mead.

The Aftermath

With our mead consumed we returned to the kitchen. Carefully peeking into the oven we determined that that doom bread summoned no demons, but it did summon at least some fire. 1/3 of the batch appears to have exploded in such a way that it combusted for at least part of the baking process. The other 2/3 looked mysteriously pristine.

After allowing some time to cool we inspected the editable results. The morsels smelled slightly of smoke, likely the result of their burning brethren. Jenny decided to take the first bite. Her face quickly contorted into the most horrible of expressions. She survived the bite but refused to take another and refused to offer any details about her experience.