What are you working on?

[maryslittlegarden]

I spent a part of yesterday organizing my fabric stash, cutting a lot of it into strips for all sorts of scrappy quilts. I really have too much don't have enough fabric, it's overwhelming. I'm done with the mask-making, I only made them for family and friends. I'm going to turn my attention back to quilts.

Fixed it for you...   

[MundaCorMeum]

That sounds like fun.  Mostly been crocheting dishcloths... easy and kinda mindless which I need.

When I was a young woman, I had a friend/mentor named HoneyLou. She was so sweet and lived in this lovely whitewashed farmhouse outside of town. She always had a big stack of crocheted dishcloths by her kitchen sink. She used them all the time and they were great. I have never made any, but now I kind of want to. It would be nice. What yarn do you find is best/hold up well/has a nice scrubby quality?

I have knitted dishcloths. Cotton yarn is very popular for them and they hold up very well. There's tons of free patterns out there.

Yeah... I use cotton yarn for them.

I actually like acrylic for dish rags (please don't hate me 😉)

But seriously.... awhile back I found a huge skein of acrylic at hobby lobby for under $2.  I crocheted a bunch of dish rags with it, and they work really well and are still holding up.  I also just recently got some cotton from knitpicks (dishy), when it was on sale to make some more.  I haven't made any, yet, but my daughter did crochet some little round tea doilies for my mil to give her for mother's day.  They worked up really nicely, and are softer than the acrylic.

*edited for spelling

[MundaCorMeum]

I've been baking more bread. I make a yeast starter the night before with equal weights of water and flour, and a sprinkle of yeast on top. This was my most recent loaf, a honey oat multigrain bread with rye and flaxseed.

Looks great!  Way better than my test recipe I did yesterday.  I tried my hand at sourdough croissants.  I worked on it all day yesterday, and gave  it an overnight rise in the fridge, then baked them earlier this morning.  They were not so great.  Not sure where I went wrong, though.

[Bernadette]

Wow, croissants! I've never been brave enough to try making croissants.

[Padraig]

Croissants are notoriously difficult. And to do it with sourdough is particularly ambitious!
I've never tried a laminated dough, but I had pretty good success with handmixing a brioche dough last year. It wasn't sourdough either, but it took like 15 minutes to gradually incorporate the pound of butter into the two pounds of dough, so I felt pretty accomplished.

[MundaCorMeum]

The process was really enjoyable.  Enjoyable enough that I'm willing to try it again (at least until I am successful, just to have the bragging rights  ).  There are a couple of things that I think may have been the issue, or a combination of all of them, perhaps.  First, I used bread flour.  I'm not sure if that's the right kind of flour for croissants, but it's all I have.  The recipe called for all purpose, and I'm using the KA Sir Lancelot flour, which is even higher in protein than their regular bread flour.  It's recommended for bagels, which is why I have it, since sourdough bagels are what I bake the most of (it works beautifully for that, actually).  The dough got an excellent rise during the initial ferment.  It had really nice texture.  But, when I did the laminating, the butter softened a bit and was oozing out of the sides a little.  I don't know if it's supposed to do that or not.  Finally, I got impatient this morning and didn't wait long enough for the final rise.  They did rise while baking, and the outer layer was flaky and soft; but the inside had definitely not risen well enough.  I might try just shaping them and letting them finish rising on the counter, and skip the fridge next time.  I always have better luck without the fridge rise when it comes to sourdough, for some reason.

[Lynne]

I spent a part of yesterday organizing my fabric stash, cutting a lot of it into strips for all sorts of scrappy quilts. I really have too much don't have enough fabric, it's overwhelming. I'm done with the mask-making, I only made them for family and friends. I'm going to turn my attention back to quilts.

Fixed it for you...   

hahaha I'm a minimalist now! 

[Padraig]

I would think bread flour would work great for croissants. In fact, it's probably necessary to get that balance between the lightness, flakiness, and slight chew of a good enriched dough. The butter leaking out could certainly have lead to problems. If you smack the cold butter with a rolling pin to flatten it, it becomes much more pliable, but without warming it.

This a YouTube channel that I like a lot, and he did a series on croissants last year. (You can see him smacking the butter in this one.)

[yt][/yt]

I hope you're successful with your croissants! I'd love to see the results.

[Gardener]

Form 1 eFile Suppressor build (.22LR); submitted yesterday. Doing fingerprints today. Hopefully have the tax stamp back in 30-45 days.

[MundaCorMeum]

Thank you, Padraig!  I'll definitely share a picture WHEN my results are better

[queen.saints]

I would think bread flour would work great for croissants. In fact, it's probably necessary to get that balance between the lightness, flakiness, and slight chew of a good enriched dough. The butter leaking out could certainly have lead to problems. If you smack the cold butter with a rolling pin to flatten it, it becomes much more pliable, but without warming it.

This a YouTube channel that I like a lot, and he did a series on croissants last year. (You can see him smacking the butter in this one.)

[yt][/yt]

I hope you're successful with your croissants! I'd love to see the results.

These pastries look really nice and if you have a pasta maker they are about 1,000 times easier than croissants.

You roll the dough through the pasta roller until it's as thin as possible, brush it with bacon grease, roll it up, and slice it into rounds. Then, you just gently push with your thumbs on the round until the layers have formed a cone, which you fill and bake.

The main thing that makes it easier than croissants is that, in general, all those steps actually go according to plan.



https://www.mangiamagna.com/homemade-italian-sfogliatella/

[Lynne]

I would think bread flour would work great for croissants. In fact, it's probably necessary to get that balance between the lightness, flakiness, and slight chew of a good enriched dough. The butter leaking out could certainly have lead to problems. If you smack the cold butter with a rolling pin to flatten it, it becomes much more pliable, but without warming it.

This a YouTube channel that I like a lot, and he did a series on croissants last year. (You can see him smacking the butter in this one.)

[yt][/yt]

I hope you're successful with your croissants! I'd love to see the results.

These pastries look really nice and if you have a pasta maker they are about 1,000 times easier than croissants.

You roll the dough through the pasta roller until it's as thin as possible, brush it with bacon grease, roll it up, and slice it into rounds. Then, you just gently push with your thumbs on the round until the layers have formed a cone, which you fill and bake.

The main thing that makes it easier than croissants is that, in general, all those steps actually go according to plan.



https://www.mangiamagna.com/homemade-italian-sfogliatella/

These look amazing (and you had me at bacon grease) but I saw the bakers attempt to make these on The Great British Bake Off and it was not easy...

And I hope no one uses margarine (or Crisco) in their baking anymore.

[Jayne]

[queen.saints]

These look amazing (and you had me at bacon grease) but I saw the bakers attempt to make these on The Great British Bake Off and it was not easy...

And I hope no one uses margarine (or Crisco) in their baking anymore.

The pictures below are the first ones I made back in 2016. They certainly wouldn't have gotten past Paul Hollywood, but it was just such a sigh of relief when the little discs of dough actually slid into cone shapes as promised.

[MundaCorMeum]

These look amazing (and you had me at bacon grease) but I saw the bakers attempt to make these on The Great British Bake Off and it was not easy...

And I hope no one uses margarine (or Crisco) in their baking anymore.

The pictures below are the first ones I made back in 2016. They certainly wouldn't have gotten past Paul Hollywood, but it was just such a sigh of relief when the little discs of dough actually slid into cone shapes as promised.

Those are pretty.  They would be a nice treat for the Feast of St. John the Baptist or The Baptism of Our Lord, as they look like sea shells.