Last night, after everyone but Jacob went to bed, I begged his help. I’ve been wanting to dip my toe back into the waters of breadmaking, but have been terribly daunted by the knowledge of how quickly I would get worn out in the process. So he happily assisted in gathering all my necessary ingredients, so I could focus my energies on mixing the dough. I thought I would try something a little simpler than my old “Nettie Bread” recipe, and I found what purported to be just the ticket: No-Knead Oat Bread.
The first thing that went wrong was that as I read through it, I thought – wait – only 1/2 a tsp of yeast? Well, that’s ridiculous. If I’m opening this packet, I’m going to use more than 1/2 a tsp. So I decided to double the recipe. After all, two loaves of bread is still a lot smaller batch than the 6 loaves I used to make at a time (or 12 when I started using the Hobart mixer!).
What I didn’t count on was that when it said “No-Knead” that was – well – a lie. I thought oh, so easy to just stir it up and let it rise overnight, right? Nah, sister, I couldn’t even stir that dough – and because I started in a bowl at the table, there was no switching horses midstream and using the Kitchen-Aid. So I had to laboriously mix it by hand, and it turned out to be A LOT of effort, and plenty of kneading.
But, I gotter done, covered, and went off to bed letting it rise overnight.
When I woke this morning, the dough was smelling delightful and had grown to the top of the bowl and touched the plastic wrap. After I got back from driving the kids to school, I set about getting the dough punched down and folded, and left it to rise again. While I waited, I got out my two dutch ovens and prepared for the next step, getting out my cutting board. Next I turned the dough out, cut in half and shaped into loaves, and let it rise again for an hour. Finally, my lovely dough was ready for the oven! I was so excited – this was my first ever attempt baking bread this way. Would it even be good?
Fast-forward 50 minutes covered, and 10 minutes uncovered in a 450°F oven, and just LOOK what came out!!
I can tell you that I was in my glory. If these tasted half as good as they looked (and smelled) …. it was very hard to wait to cut into a loaf, but I wanted to wait at least until the family could come home and see my handiwork and then we could all taste at the same time. However, I used the time for good purpose, finding my perfect lens and capturing a pretty good photo for posterity.
Now, earlier in the day, (probably while bread was rising one of those times) I had randomly decided to take a selfie, and then ask Grok to create a renaissance painting out of it. I decided I wanted the hairdo to have a little more OOMPH, so I added the prompt “This is good but make the up-swept hairstyle have more volume and height.” I liked the results:
:
So then, later in the day, after the bread was done and I’d gotten my primo shot of the finished product, all pretty on the cutting board with a vase of flowers, I thought… what if I combine these two photos?
And here’s where it gets hilariously frustrating. I’m just going to walk you through what happened next between me and Grok. Now, bear in mind, I am new to prompts, so those of you who are already experts will chuckle, but believe me, I was really trying very hard to be as detailed as I could!
Prompt 1:
combine these two images so that the woman is seated at the table behind the loaves of bread to the left of the vase, and use the same brown background as the portrait
and Grok gave me this:
First image had the correct bread photo, but with some random modern chick; and second image was the right me, but random bread. No.
In Prompt 2, I thought I could just modify the painting image and Grok would know what I meant and put it together the right way:
this image but flip it in reverse,
and seat her at the table with the two loaves of bread and vase of flowers
with the painterly brown backdrop
Again, entirely wrong. Yes the right me, but wrong bread, and then what – profile me? No.
Prompt 3, trying to give yet MORE details:
create image combining painting on left with photo of bread loaves and vase of red and orange flowers,
seating woman at the table behind the loaves,
keeping the bread in it’s same proportion, and using the painterly brown backdrop
- right me, but random bread. 2. random chick, right bread. AAAAAHHHHRG.
Prompt 4, refining my wording again:
make this renaissance woman painting the backdrop for the two loaves of bread on wooden cutting board
and vase of red and orange flowers from the photograph
Ok, now I feel like we are making some incremental progress… if we can just combine those two, we’re home free!
Prompt 5 used the bread photo with this edit:
using this photo as the foreground, place the renaissance woman painting as the backdrop behind the bread and vase
No, no, no, NO! What even??
Prompt 6 reminded Grok that the renaissance woman painting was supposed to be the one with ME in it:
using this photo as the foreground, place the renaissance woman painting as the backdrop behind the bread and vase
Head in hands. I finally admitted defeat.
An hour of futzing-about-learning-new-things-in-Photoshop later, I had what I had tried to get Grok to do from the beginning:
And that is how I came to the conclusion that Grok is a big, dumb baby. (We are not even going to discuss the alternative conclusion…)
