You're Smoking Baby!

What you see above is what happens when you, by accident, microwave a half loaf of ciabatta for 10 minutes instead of baking it for 10 minutes.......and you put the metal grill in the microwave too. Just for clarification, our microwave is also a convection oven. Last night, well, this morning, at about 2 am, I had the munchies and badly. I'm still jet lagged so I was awake. I decided that I would bake the half ciabatta and eat the rest of my prosciutto. I put the metal grill in the microwave and the bread on top of the grill like I always do. I pushed the button and set the timer for 10 minutes and walked away.

I laid down on the bed reading a magazine and about 8 minutes in, I smell the bread. I thought it was odd because I had never smelled it like that before. A few seconds later, it got stronger so I decided to get up and check on it.

I opened the bedroom door and all I could see was a cloud of smoke. I held my breath and walked into the kitchen, opened the microwave door and yelled for Matt to come open the window, which I can't reach. There was so much smoke in the kitchen that I couldn't even see the palm of my hands. The scary thing is that the smoke alarm, which had brand new batteries installed yesterday, didn't even flinch.

We opened all the doors and windows and turned on the kitchen extractor. We had to leave the flat and step out into the hallway because the air in the flat was just unbreathable. Thank God we are the only ones on this floor and probably the building this weekend because we weren't exactly dressed for the public.

When the smoke cleared, pun intended, we went back into the kitchen to try to figure out what had gone wrong. Well, turns out that instead of hitting the oven button and setting the temperature, I had just microwaved the bread. To make matters worse, I had done all this with the metal grill in the microwave. This was a VERY lucky escape. If I had waited any longer to check on the bread, it would have caught fire. Even luckier was the fact that the metal grill did not touch the sides of the microwave, which is also metal or it would have blown up.

We had to leave the windows and doors open all night so the smoke would fully clear but now the place stinks of smoke, specially the kitchen. I feel like a total idiot. I have baked that bread in there many times and never made this stupid mistake. I guess mistakes happen when you have gotten used to a certain situation and don't even think about what you're doing but operate in automatic. Live and learn.