Truly Domestic Day

Yesterday turned out to be a truly domestic day. I spent most of it in the kitchen and not at the sewing machine as hoped, but the chicken stock tutorial is really coming along. I worked on the stock for a while, it is not as time involved as it may seem, and then turned to bread making. Lately my luck with working with yeast has been lacking. My bread has been tough and dense, and the crust not much to write home about. I decided to give it another go yesterday seeing as I have lunch meat around but no bread for lunches. I was amazed at how well it came out. It was, by far, my best loaf of white bread. It rose as it should and cooked through. The crumb on it was just right, and it did not have huge air holes.



I found that part of making my bread better was throwing caution to the wind and ignoring my user's manual for the Kitchen Aid. This all came to me after watching an episode of America's Test Kitchen on PBS last weekend. It was a pizza episode, and I wanted to watch to see their crust methods. While watching them, I realized that they use their dough hook on setting 4, which, according to the user's manual, is a big no-no. I had always thought the bread was not kneading fast enough or hard enough on setting two, so this time I took it up to 4! It was a good idea for me. Hey, I am not advocating you break your Kitchen Aid; I can break mine though. The bread had perfect crumb and went through all the risings without loosing the yeast's power. It was a true success.

I then launched into a Greek feast for dinner. We had grilled lamb with homemade tzatziki and homemade flat breads. Bread making was apparently in as my flat breads also turned out. Those usually do, but after reaching successful sandwich bread again I did not know if I had used up my bread points for the day. Needless to say, we are going away from store bought bread again.

I did manage to get some more red work embroidery done, and if I can ever get the red cording into the shop, I will have some new organizational tins up.



I love mine for carrying around my embroidery tools onto the subway. They are also great to store bindi in or moo cards. I do have two up in the shop right now. One is a rectangular tin with blackwork on the top. I love that design! It is a fun one to stitch. The other is a circular one, with a removable lid. It is great for bindi or for holding all your cut ends when you don't want to go off to the garbage or when one is not near, like on the airplane or train. It holds needles perfectly and can even hold a pair of nail clippers if you want to be really mobile with your sewing and not take scissors with you.

Today is full of cleaning the kitchen, freezing up the stock, and trying to fit some sewing in before I have to leave for 826 to do tutoring. I hope to write up that stock tutorial tonight and have it up for you all tomorrow.