Baking Day Tuesday: a flop!

Strange day.  It seems the universe did not want me to bake much today.  And what I did get baked totally flopped.  I got a late start, even though I was up in good time, but I did remember to pull the yeast out of the fridge to warm up.  Finally, around lunch time I got serious about making bread.  While it was raising the first time, the dancing queen (4 year old daughter) and I mixed up some pie dough.  We did not bake pies today, but it is in the plan.  Still gotta use up those apples.  I had planned to make some cookies also, but that hasn't happened yet. 

The bread... I don't know what happened.  It raised the first time and a little bit the second time.  After waiting and waiting, I finally baked the poor pitiful things.  I see a lot of french toast and bread crumbs in our future, as well as another bread baking day.  Maybe tomorrow.

Back to the pie dough.  This is a great recipe that I got from my mom.  She makes a huge batch and then freezes it in balls so that when the pie making bug bites, she's already got dough made.  Here's the recipe:

Moist Pie Crust Mix
from some cookbook that is held together by a rubber band

10 cups flour
1 Tbs salt
4 cups shortening (or 3 1/4 cup lard)
Combine flour and salt in very large bowl.  Mix well.  With pastry  blender, cut in shortening until evenly distributed and resembles corn meal texture. 
Add:
1 1/2 cup cold water
1/8 cup flour-if needed
Add water all at once and mix lightly until the flour absorbs all the water.  If dough is too sticky, sprinkle flour over the top.  Divide dough into balls.  Makes 10 single pie crusts or 5 double pie crusts.  Freeze, or not.  My mom has been known to bake five pies in a day, but I'm aiming for just one.  :)

Hopefully the next time I bake, things will work out better!