Cooking Bread in a Dutch Oven and Alternative Steaming Techniques

Commercial bread ovens have a steam injection system. The steam keeps the surface of the dough supple so that dough can expand gracefully during baking. Jim Lahey’s popular no-knead bread recipe uses a dutch oven to emulate steam injection. The Dutch oven method seals in the moisture contained in the dough during the first half hour of baking. It works great and I cook all my bread this way. That being said it can be tricky to plop a loaf of wet,...

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Saturday Tweets: Cooking in Clay, Cuteness and Pickles

Why food tastes better when cooked in clay: https://t.co/8BqNmrbFZZ — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 22, 2017 How parking lots are ruining Los Angeles https://t.co/NzhmC0pxYK via @CurbedLA — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 22, 2017 Double Rustic Barn Doors (From Framing Lumber) https://t.co/Sof6tD8uvH — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 20, 2017 Small Batch Bread and Butter Pickles https://t.co/JekNG6H15g — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 22, 2017 Wha...

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De-Cluttering for DIYers, Homesteaders, Artists, Preppers, etc.

...tock Up Keep a stocked, rotating pantry full of dried goods for day to day cooking and expand the quantities so that you have enough for an emergency. (Personally, I think that, at minimum, any sensible household should be able to hole up for a week without power or water.) Your family will be more comfortable eating familiar foods like tuna, peanut butter, soup, grains and beans and home-canned goods during an emergency than they would eating wei...

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I Spent a Year Making a Bed

How’s that for a click bait title? But I really did spend almost a year on this with most of that time eaten up teaching myself how to do marquetry and inlay work. As I mentioned before, my first attempts didn’t go well and I spent a lot of time searching for advice on how to do this particular style of Art Nouveau work that almost nobody does anymore. Sanding and finishing metal and wood right next to each other also proved difficult and I’m not...

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Misadventures in Laser Cutting

...l wood box. Laser cutters can also cut entirely through thin materials so that opens up more possibilities to do things that would be difficult to do by hand. I’m intrigued, for instance, with the possibilities for making three dimensional folding paper cards. You could also use the laser cutter for screen printing, making stencils, wood inlay or marquetry. Many thanks to the knowledgeable staff of the Octavia Lab!...

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