Bread Surprise

The whole house smells so good right now, because I just finished making my first loaf of bread in my new bread maker. The work was done by the machine, so I did not have to set the timer to check on bread rising in the oven or worry about getting bread into the oven before I'd need to run errands and such.

But the bread is not without surprises. Here it is, three days shy of Epiphany, but we have a bauble baked in.
The kneading paddle came off into the loaf! The booklet features a prominent instruction on what to do if this should happen, so I gather it is rather common. But it was completely unexpected to me.

We have king cakes on the brain because the Engineer wants to be a king for his birthday coming up in a little more than a week. As befits the season, we'll be making mardi gras crowns and hanging purple green and gold streamers. I don't think I'll be baking a little plastic baby into the birthday cake, but the Engineer's grandpa is hoping to come up with a genuine king cake, baby and all, to bring to the party too.

All in all, I'd rather have the little plastic baby in my cake than a stainless steel paddle in my bread.

The first loaf is cooling, but if I can tell from the delightful aroma, this will be a gift we will all enjoy! I look forward to trying some more of the scrumptious recipes featured on the Bread Blog.