{"id":49,"date":"2020-05-24T21:42:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T21:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/2020\/05\/24\/quarantine-chronicles-day-70-bakers-cant-be-choosers-for-success-youve-gotta-roll-with-failure"},"modified":"2020-05-24T21:42:21","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T21:42:21","slug":"quarantine-chronicles-day-70-bakers-cant-be-choosers-for-success-youve-gotta-roll-with-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/news\/commentary\/quarantine-chronicles-day-70-bakers-cant-be-choosers-for-success-youve-gotta-roll-with-failure","title":{"rendered":"Quarantine Chronicles Day 70: Bakers can’t be choosers\u2014for success you’ve gotta roll with failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Day 70 assignment came from, once again, my steadfastly willowy managing editor Melissa Evans, and, once again, it entailed baking, getting back on that horse that kicked me in the head when I followed her first assignment, baking bread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This time, I was tackling cinnamon rolls for a nice Sunday breakfast, or, because it took so long, brunch.<\/p>\n

My Grandma Bet made the best cinnamon rolls anyone in my extended family has ever had. So, I called my sister Debi to get the recipe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t one,\u201d she replied. \u201cShe just made them.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I relied on a recipe Melissa sent me and would you even be happy if I told you I followed the directions perfectly and the result was the baked equivalent of a warm basket full of puppies by the fireplace on a crisp winter\u2019s morning?<\/p>\n

In fact, the project was a mess from the very beginning, and I\u2019m at a loss to explain why, other than perhaps a typo-riddled recipe.<\/p>\n

I put all the right ingredients, using military-grade calipers to get the most precise measurements, into my million-dollar Bosch mixer: flour, dry active yeast and a saucepan mixture of milk, instant mashed potato flakes (I know!), butter, sugar and salt and a couple of eggs and beat it for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

This part was fun and relaxing. Things would change.<\/p>\n

Next, I dumped the mixture onto a floured breadboard and a pretty fair amount ran down onto the floor. I was to knead the mixture into the shape of a ball, and that wasn\u2019t going to happen. It was adamant about staying in the shape of a Frisbee (or novelty flying disc). I kept adding more flour, trying to coax the puddle of dough into a ball. A lot of flour. A lot of kneading. No ball. Maybe if I\u2019d dumped 5 more pounds of flour in, but I doubted even that would work. So, I gave up on geometric shapes and tossed the mixture into a bowl to let it rise (45-60 minutes).<\/p>\n

And that part worked. An hour later the mixture that had filled half a bowl was filling up the whole bowl.<\/p>\n

Next step: Punch the dough. Don\u2019t have to ask me twice. I gave it a good slug and it sort of went \u201coof\u201d and receded back to its original size. I punched it a few more times to ensure it didn\u2019t rise up and counterattack. Then I made the delicious filler part, with cinnamon and brown sugar.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re getting close to the baking part, but first came the step where I reacquainted myself with utter baking failure. The recipe told me to roll the dough (assuming, I guess, that I had succeeded in making it into a ball form) onto a breadboard into an 18-by-12-inch rectangle. Using a rolling pin (for the first time in my young life), which just sort of skidded across the dough, I flattened it and then I was to roll up the rectangle (this is the \u201croll\u201d part of cinnamon rolls), and, look, the way things were turning out, that just wasn\u2019t going to happen. The dough was too sticky and loose to roll, but, using a spatula, I nevertheless acted like I was rolling it and I scooched the dough into a long strip, which I chopped into a dozen squares and placed in a cooking pan.<\/p>\n

At this point, I had long abandoned the conceit that I was making cinnamon rolls, and I was quite tempted to throw everything out, but I stubbornly soldiered on. There was too much blood spilled to surrender now. If I was now baking a cinnamon pizza, or cinnamon scones, or an apple pie, then so be it. I was making whatever would come out of the oven.<\/p>\n

And it came out nice and golden brown, filling the house with mouth-watering home-baked aroma.<\/p>\n

I made the icing, which was the easiest thing I\u2019d done in hours, even easier than turning on the mixer; it has 3 or 4 speeds and I wasn\u2019t even sure if I picked the right one. Don\u2019t give me choices.<\/p>\n

I drizzled the icing on and cut the \u201crolls\u201d into a dozen squares and proudly pranced around the house demanding that everyone try one.<\/p>\n

They were a hit. And they tasted perfect. I had a couple with a nice cup of coffee. I don\u2019t know what they are. Let\u2019s call them Tim\u2019s mock cinnamon \u201crolls.\u201d I wouldn\u2019t go through the hassle of making them again, but if someone else did, I\u2019d be happy to have one.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m gonna go ahead and call this project a success. With an asterisk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I was now baking a cinnamon pizza, or cinnamon scones, or an apple pie, then so be it. I was making whatever would come out of the oven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":1070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[62,20],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[22],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-quarantine-chronicles","tag-tim-grobaty","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}