Bananafana-bo-bagel

So last week I decided to bake some banana scones and a loaf of sourdough Einkorn Walnut and Raisin Miche. At the same time. With my phone beside my work area. While answering texts and replying to Facebook comments about tasty recipes that would use up my excess supply of ripe bananas.

Needless to say, I was distracted a tee-weency bit.

But I didn't realize it till 4 hours into proofing the bread. It was not rising at all. I raised my head after peering down at the dense dough mound and looked directly at the covered bowl with the sourdough levain in it. "No way," I said to myself, but I knew it was true. Painfully, painfully true. I had never added it to the mix.

A cold chill ripped through me as I tried to retrace the steps of the recipe. "Oh, no!" my poor brain shrieked. "I must have used my sourdough starter instead of the levain! And it was all I have!"

Frantically, I started searching the internet for a solution to my crisis. Maybe I could convert the levain back to starter. I felt sick. As quickly as the fear had consumed me, my reasoning brain came back and whispered, "Why don't you check the refrigerator and see if your starter is there?"

I felt like slapping my forehead in desperation.  I took a deep breath.

I dropped my internet query and quietly searched the Inner Sanctum of Chaos, otherwise known as the interior of my refrigerator.

There it was. The starter. Just where I had put it the night before after I made the levain.

If someone had offered me a measuring cupful of whiskey at that moment, I'm quite sure I would have tried my best to gasp it down, so keenly did I feel the need of a balancing shock to my system.

Not surprisingly, no one appeared with the longed-for libation. And so I returned to the limp dough, plunged my hand in, snatched back a goodly clump, and glommed it into my mouth.

It was delicious and deeply, awesomely comforting. Only a dough eater would understand. A faint hope rose in my grieving breast.

I grabbed another clump and baked it for ten minutes on a cookie sheet. I removed it, drenched it in butter, and consumed it, steaming hot.

It reminded me of a cinnamon raisin bagel. I snatched my doughnut baking pans from the cabinet and started rolling segments of dough into the desired size. I was able to get nine "bagels" out of the forlorn loaf. No one would guess that they weren't bagels unless they picked one up. I tossed one of those rings on the scale: "Holy bagel, Batman!" It weighed in at 6.5 ounces!

Presently dear hubby came home and devoured one greedily, grunting, "good" as he chewed.

"Huzzah for the Wholy Heavyweight Champion of the Whirl!" (Don't worry if that doesn't make sense to you. It's just me entertaining myself.) I hung up my oven mitts and exited the ring, triumphant but utterly exhausted.

And after all that, I didn't like the banana scones.