Home-made Bread and a Super Soft Slide

exploding dough

finished


I have been in major nesting mode lately (no, not pregnant) and have had the urge to make home-made bread. Never having been the baking type I was leery, but I decided what the heck, give it a try. It helped helped that Albertsons had flour on sale for $1.38 a 5lb bag.
I was all excited to go home and make it, when I got home I realized I didn't have loaf pans!! What kind of mom doesn't even have loaf pans? I was really bummed...until I came across a bread machine at a yard sale for $2 this am SCORE!
After hunting around the web for a bit I discovered Hilly billy Housewife had a great generic bread machine manual. The recipe I use was super easy, basically dump the ingredients in and turn it on.
Two hours into the rising I was a little worried, it was pressing on the glass! Visions of bread making ala I Love Lucy popped into my head, but thank goodness it stayed contained.
It was stuck to the lid a bit and looked a little like a mushroom, but yummy just the same. The entire loaf was devoured in under 10 minutes, a huge hit with the kids!
So I bet you are wondering where the super soft slide comes into this, huh??
Well while I was cleaning the egg bombs of the porch (another story all together), my dear sweet (cough) Noah got the almost empty (thank God) bottle of fabric softener from the garage and gleefully poured it down the slide. Being pooped from scraping raw eggs off the porch I was in no mood to clean the slide... So I let them slide down it in their jeans and put then the jeans in the washer. Hey, I killed 2 birds with one stone; slide clean and clothes smell good. Kids also needed a bath but that's kinda a daily thing.

ETA:Second loaf turned our much better looking!