Somewhere I heard that confession is good for character building and I'm sure I could use some of that. So here is a picture of what was a very nice loaf of NY Jewish Rye that was subjected to one of my harebrained ideas.

Rye crescents

As the older members may know, I have a family member stationed in Afghanistan doing his 4th tour  with the Army. I send him care packages from time to time to improve his meal plan and it is this I am working on. I recently sent him a microwave oven and a big box of popcorn and a way to power the oven. This time my intention is to send a ham and cheese on rye sandwich for the outfit (10 men).I am confident the smoked ham will be safe during the 2 week trip to the middle East in the cry-o-vac packages the butcher uses. I have sent meat before and it's always good even in the heat of the desert after 2 long weeks. I thought that if I froze the bread it would stand up to the vacuum and not be crushed like a marshmallow as the air is pulled out of the bag. At first it looked good. When it started to thaw things started to get ugly. First the bottom caved in then it got shrunk up and raisin like. The crumb (boy that's a stretch) is solid.

So if you have ever wondered what the food saver would do to your bread, now we know what I should have guessed before hand. Back to the drawing board.

Eric