A tip for bread-machine baking.

One good thing to keep in mind with any recipe, is to make sure that the cord to your bread machine is not anywhere near a burner on the stove which happened to be on high just before your sister moved the pot off of it. If you're not careful, the cord will end up on the burner and the insulation around the wires will begin to melt off onto the stovetop. If this happens, remain calm, turn off the machine and unplug it. Carefully clean the melted rubber off the stove as best you can while it's hot. When you can't get any more off because it's too hot to scrub, run down to the basement and get the electrical tape. Wrap approximately 3 yards of tape around the 3 inches of cord that got burned. (It's too bad it's black on your white cord; it can't be helped. That is, if you want to finish this loaf tonight. I'm sure they sell white tape somewhere, but you'll just have to make do.) Remove the pan of dough from the machine, and set it on the stove (not on any hot burners) and cover it to keep the dough warm. Then plug the machine back in and let the cycle run through as many minutes as it had before the cord burned. Then wait for an appropriate pause so you can re-insert the pan of dough to let it finish. Keep a watch for any smoky smells. If you notice something, check it out, but it's probably just flour that got spewed over onto the elements underneath. No problem. Tomorrow when you're sufficiently rested and the stove is sufficiently cooled from today's fiasco, figure out some way to get the last bits of melted cord insulation off the stovetop, preferably without having to resort to turning the stove on to burn it off. Because that would stink. Literally.