When things don't go the way you planned

In this past week, how many times have things 'failed' in your life? I mean, you had a plan or schedule, or even just an idea, but something happened and your plan 'failed'.

I am one of those people who likes to plan carefully, and I'm also a perfectionist. Often, I think of all the worst possible outcomes and make a plan for them. I have Plans A, B, C, D ...! But one curious thing is that I am also very optimistic AFTER I have made all my plans, or after I've thought things through very carefully. That is, after my idea is set, I strongly believe it will be okay or that I will be able to tweak things to make it okay.

This happened to me a couple of days ago. I carefully prepared sourdough to make a round loaf of bread. I'd spent many hours the day before making the dough and I had put it in the refrigerator overnight as usual. I'd done everything as usual, except for two things: first, I was using a new brand of bread flour, and second, I used only white flour with no whole-wheat or other kind of flour (rye, buckwheat, etc.).

In the morning I took out the loaf, read to bake it. I even was recording a video to share on YouTube. But then disaster happened! The cotton cloth wouldn't come off the dough! I stopped the video - you can see it below - and thought "Oh no! Why has this happened? Dough has never stuck before, and I put more than enough flour on the cloth first. What can I do???"

I took some time to carefully scrape off the dough, and I thought "Okay, this will work. It won't be the same bread as usual. It probably won't rise into a nice ball shape but we can eat it. Let's just bake it." And that is what I did.

I was right, the baked loaf wasn't as domed at it usually is - it had a flatter shape than usual. The top of the bread didn't look nice because I couldn't fix it to make a smooth surface. (That is why the bread was flatter - the rough surface had no skin to trap steam to make it rise very well. But the texture was perfect! It had both small and large holes and as you can see in the photos, the holes are glossy (shiny) which shows that the sourdough fermented well. It also tasted wonderful.

So next time your plans 'fail', think what you can do to modify them and how you can salvage the situation. You might be pleasantly surprised :)

If you'd like to see more bread I've made, please watch this video on YouTube.

And this one where you can see the preparation.

Or this one which shows me creating a new recipe.