I look forward to this post every year! Makes me feel better about my own baking boo-boos. Like just a couple of weeks ago ... I was making ciabatta bread using a recipes that I have made successfully for years ... and years and years. Well, this time, I was obviously NOT paying attention to either the amount of water or the amount of flour I used. I was using my stand mixer for the initial mixing. When made correctly, at this point the dough will come together on the beater blade in about 6 minutes. This is my favorite part of the mixing process because it happens almost magically. Anyway, this time the 6 minute mark came and went and the dough was still sloppily slapping (say THAT 5 times fast!!) around in the bowl and not showing any sign that it was close to coming together. Confused, I decided to turn up the speed on my mixer. 10 minutes ... 12 minutes ... 15 minutes and no dice. That dough was still a gloppy mess. As time passed, the smile on my face turned into a grumpy frown. Okay. Time to admit defeat and throw in the towel. I turned off the mixer and paused. Hmmm - the mixer body felt funny; like it was HOT!!! Egads!! I almost burned out the motor in my beloved KitchenAid mixer which I lovingly call Big Red. It took a couple of HOURS for Big Red to cool down to normal. And the dough? Scraped into a couple of plastic grocery bags and thrown into the garbage can where it landed with heavy thunk.

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