I’m thinking of changing the name of this blog to “I’m an Idiot”, seeing as how that’s the theme of most of my stories. Honestly I don’t know what’s happening. I am dropping things, breaking things, crashing into things; it’s a little scary. Can that be the sign of a brain tumor? What about dimentia? Is 41 too young for that? Because I’m sort of losing my mind.
For Fess-Up Friday may I present the pizza dough incident that occurred this week.
Setting: My kitchen.
Characters: Me, one son, three daughters and four of their friends.
I decided to make pizza dough, which I do about once a week. Everyone was hungry as we’d just gotten back from swimming. Normally I let the dough raise on the back porch because it’s hot and humid* but I wanted to speed things up a smidge so I preheated the oven a bit and put the dough in to raise. In a big plastic bowl.
Fifteen minutes later I decided to preheat the oven to 500º–the temperature pizza cooks at. At no point did the fact that there was already something oven occur to me. Not even when I started smelling something very odd. Eventually the odd chemical-y smell got incredibly strong and I opened the door to find a bowl halfway melted and dripping all over the oven.
I’m very proud to say that I did not swear even once. Not even when the plastic puddle on the bottom of the oven burst into flames.
The nice thing about fires in the oven is that all you have to do is shut the door and it will eventually go out. I stood there with a fire extinguisher but all I could think was, “this is going to make the biggest mess if I spray it.” So I didn’t. And the fire went out after a few minutes.
Although the 90% of the bowl melted, the bread did not get burned. But the bread probably would have given us cancer if we’d eaten it. The plastic smelled so horrendous!
I’m sure my house is now full of toxins but the good news is that I’m apparently already brain-damaged. So no harm done! And the oven was surprisingly easy to clean up once it cooled.
Have you melted anything you’ve regretted?
P.S. There are drawbacks to letting your dough rise outside. Even if it’s pretty well covered, you know how sneaky bugs are. This was a loaf of bread India made last week. A fly had crawled down into the corner of the pan and baked right into the corner.
Want to see it closer up? So gross. You might want to think twice about eating anything I cook for you.
There is no way I could put any food outside – if the ants didn’t get it, the squirrels certainly would.
My college housemate once put a pizza box (with pizza) in the oven to keep it warm. We rescued the smoking box and thought we had everything under control, until the firemen (called by someone else in the house) arrived. Boy, did we look stupid. Probably because we WERE stupid.
Nice one dummy.
I had a melt incident as well. I keep my olive oil in a plastic squeeze bottle (ps, you should try that. Super convenient, unless you plan on melting it.). One day, cooking, I set the bottle on a burner that had just been turned off. Well, like magic, the bottle melted onto the stove top and when I went to pick it up again, the thing came apart at the bottom and olive oil went EVERYWHERE. My husband thought I was just awesome.
I think it’s hilarious you would watch a fire and not put it out because it would make a mess. I’d totally do the same thing.
Funny blog entry!! I think we’ve all done something crazy with the oven before—I’m surprised there aren’t more frequent and serious fires associated with ovens and rangetops. For me, it was an especially distracting week with some financial worries and I put a glass pyrex baking dish in the oven, filled with a potato casserole. I had made the dish ahead of time and stored it in the ‘fridge—with its plastic lid on it. Unfortunately I then put the entire dish—and, yes! The lid!—into the oven. Within a short time, I also smelled something funky and opened the oven door to find melted blue plastic sinking into my lovely casserole!
Oh, and @WhitneyIngram, putting olive oil into a squeeze bottle—brilliant!! Thanks for sharing!
tip: put plastic bowl of dough in the sink, fill sink with super hot water. Let the water come 3/4 of the way up the bowl (careful not to get any water in the bowl.) Cover the bowl with a lightly damp clean dishcloth. I have silicon bread pans that I do the final rise the same way They float in the hot water as well. Cuts the rise time way down and no melted plastic. I have killed way to many rolls by Pre-heating the oven while at the same time trying to quick rise them in the (same) warm oven.
that is so funny..my Jenni does the same types of things just last week she left the burner, albeit low with a glass pan cover on top for like 3 hours. Luckily no one burned themselves. I used to get harshed when we were first married… i now just giggle to myself, fix the problem and know that someday i will come home and the house will be on fire…. 🙂 thanks for sharing.
If it makes you feel better, I did that. Twice.
This is tame, but I got a lovely wedding present from one of my bridesmaids of a cutting board that has grooves carved in for the juices to run into. (This was 37 yrs. ago when a $25 cutting board was considered a luxury gift and we were so grateful.) Anyway, I continue to love the board and use it to this day, but I hand wash it and then, usually, put it in the oven which is still a little warm, to dry. Inevitably, I forget to take it out and forget it’s in there and many days later turn the oven on to bake something and start to smell a scorched, woodsy smell. The bottom has blackened over the years, but it’s still the best cutting board for juicy meats and I just can’t bear to part with it and figure the scorching kills the e-coli!