In which much smoke is produced indoors, a heating device is used improperly, and labels are ambiguous

On Saturday, I bought a baguette at the store. In a moment of inattention, I actually thought it was an unbaked baguette dough, ready to be popped into the oven and baked. Upon opening the package, I realized it was actually a complete baked baguette, ready to be eaten. Still, on the label there was a little glyph I perceived to indicate 'microwave' and the words '6-8 minuten'.

Now, we have a funky combo oven/other heating options appliance. I'm sure it's super useful for urban European living, which usually puts a premium on space. Here in our apartments, however, we could easily dedicate half of our living room to an elaborate shrine for this combined cooking appliance (CCA) without negatively affecting the livability of the place.

My roommate and I have made liberal use of the CCA for our delicious one-euro frozen pizzas, albeit only on one setting, which we empirically determined to most closely match a standard American definition of oven. That setting has this symbol on it:



In attempting to find a microwave setting, I fiddled around with the dial and found one setting that roomie and I thought made suitably microwave-like lights and noises. The LED display let me set a time. I split the difference indicated on the package and put it on for 7 minutes. I then went to take a quick shower and roomie went to his computer in the other room. About halfway through the shower, I noted that the bread was smelling quite good.

Less than a minute later, I heard the smoke alarm go off and quickly ended the shower to see what was up. I opened the bathroom door and emerged into a completely smoke-filled room.

Three days later, our room still smells like burnt material. Amoong other options, our CCA apparently has the equivalent of 'oven', 'microwave', and 'two GIANT lasers and the sun,' as indicated by this helpful symbol:


When we opened the CCA to inspect the damage, this is what we found:


The baguette was completely black through and through. Maybe I'm just ignorant about cooking, but I'm reasonably sure that neither microwaves nor ovens go from lickable-without-repercussions to fill-the-room-with-smoke in seven minutes.

Overall, it was a learning experience: don't experiment with hot things, don't trust labels, and if I were ever to make a CCA, think very hard before adding a giant laser option, and if you absolutely must, label it unambiguously.

Or, maybe the real lesson is:don't put baguettes in the oven ;)