Kitchen F#!% Ups

I thought maybe something happened to my bread-baking abilities. I rarely have trouble with bread. I proof my yeast if it's in question. I use my microwave as a proofing box - after boiling some water in there, it's nice and warm and humid.

Since I've had really great luck with the recipes from King Arthur Flour's cookbook, I decided to make this bread. It looked easy, doesn't require a huge amount of kneading, and is relatively quick to make.

Things started off on the wrong foot when I dug through the newly-purchased groceries to find the yeast I had just bought. Uh... where's the yeast? Gone. I was cheated out of yeast! So I sent Larry off to the store while I tried to keep my oats warm (soaked in boiling water, but they were quickly cooling off).

Then everything came together okay after that. The dough mixed up fine, and I put it in a bowl and into my proofing box for a 1-hour rise. But it wasn't rising. Boiled more water, left it for another hour. It rose some, enough, I decided, and I shaped it into a log and put it in the loaf pan for the second rising.

Again, it wasn't rising. I ended up working on that thing until the next day. I finally just gave up and baked it. The top is completely flat. It's about the size of a half-slice of bread. Beautiful crumb, though, and super tasty. Just really stupid looking.

So what was the problem? I read back over the recipe and referred to the front of the chapter, where it states that instant yeast is NOT the same as active dry yeast. The Bread Baker's Apprentice (Peter Reinhard, bread god) says they're the same. I read a bunch of online forums and I'm not the only one that's confused. After searching everywhere, I discovered that no one sells instant yeast. So I ordered some from King Arthur Flour and made the bread again. Guess what? There's a difference. So the secret is true instant yeast. Who knew?

• Honey-Oatmeal Sandwich Bread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 197)

I made gnocchi for the first time ever today. It wasn't very hard, and it turned out really nice. Until I tried to cook it. The plan was to cook the gnocchi in boiling water, then pan-sear them in butter and shave black truffle on the top. I cooked the gnocchi in the boiling water until it floated to the top. It didn't take long. Then I heated butter in a skillet and when it stopped foaming, I added the gnocchi. Everything was going fine until the gnocchi started to stick all over the pan. I ended up with a mushy mess, no brown crust on the outside of the gnocchi. It was all stuck to the pan.

Problem number one: I should have cooked the gnocchi slightly longer. The main bonehead move was using a regular pan instead of a nonstick. What was I thinking? I cooked a second batch and it turned out much, much better.

Big gloppy mess:

• Pan-Seared Potato Gnocchi (Fine Cooking #90, January 2008, p. 62) with Browned Butter & Black Truffle