Cooking Project: Part 1 of 7

Sooo. Yesterday was Day 1 of my spontaneous cooking project. And, I must say, it was a complete fail. :-P But I'm going to be optimistic, and learn from this failure. Which was quite epic. (This whole optimism thing is kinda hard to learn...) So the recipe I'd picked out was Rosemary Olive Knots from Nick Malgieri's The Modern Baker. *cough* If that was modern baking, then I very much prefer the old-fashioned kind. :-P The dough didn't rise and turned out excessively gooey. Gluey, actually. A mix between gooey and gluey. It was gross, period. And it baked into a hardened gluey glob. EW. So I'm terribly confused. In the book, the rolls look amazing, which is why I tried the recipe, and then I cook it and it's unedible.

Doesn't that look delicious??? So either the recipe just stinks (which I highly doubt) or I did something wrong... Which is probably what happened. :-) I'm wondering about the yeast I used...and the flour. And my sanity. :-P This is a bit more stressful than I thought it would be. I was up till 10:30 last night making these and they turn out gluey. UGH. So. Since I don't like to fail, I'm going to cook this recipe *again* today, and probably use different flours and experiment a little bit. Hopefully it will turn out better than last night's:

Yep. There they are, the gluey rolls. :-P Gaaack. So. Wish me luck as I embark on another quest for the perfect roll. :-)

-Esther