Baby socks, Bust and Bread
Phew! Do you see the correlation between my going back to work and the decrease in blog posts again? Ah well. That’s the way it goes, and there’s a mortgage to be paid.
Last night I finally made it along to Tuesday night knitting in the Borders down the road from me. It was a lovely night and I hope to get there more often.
The final spur to go came from Laura, who came to my rescue with the extra 2g of sock yarn I needed to finish the baby socks (which I did, last night, thanks Laura!).
While I was in Borders I found a copy of Bust magazine, and it’s top. I’m not quite as young and trendy as I suspect most of the readers are, but it’s lovely to read a magazine that’s not choc full of negative messages about women. ok, ok, I’ve also been hanging out on the Feminist Knitters group on Ravlery. And the athiest/agnostic group. It’s really refreshing talking to people with the same beliefs as me. (Not that I don’t usually, but, well, these things don’t get brought up often and as I have no desire to be preached at I don’t preach to others).
I’ve now made 5 loaves of bread. I’m trying to make it a routine thing, part of the housework I do all the time. Because, you know, I do housework all the time…
Anyway, so far the breakdown has been:
Loaf 1: Edible. Tasty even.
Loaf 2: Sunk and stodgy, completely inedible. Some research narrowed this down to either a) too much salt, b) too much water, c) not good enough flour, d) too little salt, c) the yeast getting wet before it should. Helpful.
Loaf 3: Edible again. Used less salt. Thought I had it.
Loaf 4: Not great, but edible. Sunk again.
Loaf 5: For this I abandoned the wholemeal flour, as I don’t have strong wholemeal, only strong white, and D suspected that this may be the problem. So, instead I made a white based loaf with wheat bran and oats added. It’s just come out of the machine and it’s about twice the size of the other loaves, looks like bread and smells delicious. Excellent!
So, I’ll be off to the health food shop to find some strong wholemeal flour I think.
You know, if you’ve a store which sells it, you might pick up some “gluten flour” - it’s essentially just wheat gluten from flour, but you can add a tablespoon or two to wholemeal flour to give you a stronger flour. It might help with the machine.
The other thing is that wholemeal flour absorbs water a bit differently & also builds its gluten more slowly, so if you’ve an option to give it a longer rise time that might help.
10 Jan 2008 at 6:40 pm
The founder and editor of Bust is Debbie Stoller of Stitch n’ Bitch fame. I used to buy Bust when I lived at home, but it’s kinda pricey here and, like you, I think I’m not as young and trendy as its target audience is.
I remember one of my old issues of Bust had a pattern for knitted legwarmers. That would have been 6 or 7 years ago.
12 Jan 2008 at 5:37 pm
congrats on the bread! i like reading bust every once in awhile because i am definately passed their sell by date!
16 Jan 2008 at 6:27 am
I love Beth Ditto & Bust!!!
Check this out:
http://www.badknitgirls.com/
Vote for me? Pleeeeease…
21 Jan 2008 at 1:59 am
Bust sounds good but I’m probably well over the hill in their eyes, nice socks too!
22 Jan 2008 at 7:44 pm