Domesticity...

[guenievre]

So lately I've been being ridiculously domestic - as in staying home, cooking dinner, etc. I even baked bread last night. (A nifty recipe I found, actually - it's almost as easy as bread machine bread, but not - all the kneading gets done by Kitchenaid, and it's a quick rising recipe so start-to-finish it took about 2 hours. I need to tweak it just a little, as I don't think it rose QUITE enough (the bread is yummy, but a little denser than I would like - really good for sandwiches though. I'll post it once I'm really happy with it...)

Anyway, so this domestic gig is really nice, actually. I'm more content right now than I have been in months...it's odd, because I always believed clutter didn't bother me. But apparently it did...< shrug > I shall stop this train of writing, though, else I'll sound like one of those silly FlyLady testimonials...and, well, no. I think somebody needs to write Flylady for cynics, though, as her system would be REALLY useful if it wasn't drenched in sweetened chicken soup. (No, really, and it's as icky as it sounds...go here if you don't believe me).

Meanwhile, there's lots of stuff I want to do before Coronation - maybe new garb for both of us (we'll see on this one) and a subtlety for the Queen's Tea... oh, and some "fleur de lis" themed stuff for that other competition... the nice thing is, since we've been staying home and the house is clean-ish, this almost sounds feasible... yay sanity.

Comments

from Jenny

[(Anonymous)]

(In class right now. Prof talks so softly that I haven't heard the lecture for the past hour.)

You're right, FL would be very useful if it weren't so damned saccharine.

I found it on the net a while ago and tried to use it, but... ugh. I felt like some over sentimental housewife, a la Jean Teasdale. I might take your challenge and rewrite it in a realistic way :-)

We have a bread machine, with which we make all our bread. I don't like it much, though. The bread is always too crumbly and dense. When you grow up on Wonder bread, it's hard to look back.

What's a subtlety?

Re: from Jenny

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, y'know, it might be fun to do the rewriting thing. One of these days I'll get around to picking up the book that she based it on - the "SHE" one - but I'm afraid it'll be just as bad...

And I agree about bread machine bread, which is why I don't use mine either. I'll definitely have to get you a copy of the recipe I used last night, as it's *yumm*.

Oh, and a subtlety is more or less food art. IE food that's one thing that looks like something else, or food sculpture, or...doing REALLY weird things to food, in other words. :-) For instance, at one feast I made a papermache pig and covered it in gingerbread - that's a subtlety. OR at another we made trees that held sausage "fruits" - that was a really FUN subtlety...I did a class on them once, I'll have to write it up more thoroughly as a paper and get it onto my website.

Re: from Jenny

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

What's going on with the bread machine bread is an insufficiency of fats to improve the 'crumb' of the bread. I've, erm, got two bread machines and have made bread for years and years and years and realized what affects crumb and texture by long experimentation.

Try substituting out the water in the recipe for milk or buttermilk. Another thing you can do to fortify the fat content is to crack an egg into your liquid measure, then fill up the measuring cup to your mark with milk or buttermilk.

If that doesn't work to get you your loft and airy crumb, then fortify your yeast with about a spoonful of gluten. I commonly do the egg/milk/gluten thing and get a lofty loaf that comes almost to the top of my machine, and it's only a very little bit denser-- and a lot tastier!-- than Wonder Bread.

And lastly, when you cut into your loaf is key. Allow the loaf to cool for at least a half hour, or your loaf's internal steam will collapse the structure. It has to evaporate slowly, or the bread will fall.

Here's a foolproof breadmachine recipe:

2 cups spelt flour
1 cup King Arthur regular flour
2 T. butter
2 eggs in a measuring cup, milk or buttermilk to the 1 cup mark and an additional 1/4 cup milk
1 t. salt
1 T. gluten
1 1/2 T. yeast

You can substitute whole wheat for the spelt; you can also substitute white flour or "better for bread" flour for the spelt/whole wheat. I happen to like the King Arthur flours the best, especially their 'white whole wheat,' which is a lot less bitter in taste than regular whole wheat.

Re: from Jenny

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

I'm a dork-- I quoted the wrong recipe as it omits 2 T. sugar. Here's the basic bread machine recipe and a tasty variant:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ciorstan/51717.html

Re: from Jenny

[zihuatanejo.livejournal.com]

Ooo, thanks.

We use Pilsbury Bread Machine flour... is that sort of thing what you mean when you say 'better for bread' flour?

Re: from Jenny

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. The way flour works, is that it's called 'strong' when it has a high gluten content. The 'better for bread' flours are milled from strong wheats. The opposite end of the spectrum is pastry flour, which is as weak as possible as gluten is an undesireable effect for pastry. Middle ground is all-purpose flour, which actually does make decent bread.

You can up your flour's strength by adding gluten to your recipe. I find gluten *very* useful when I want air bread, or if there's any question as to the strength of my yeast (aged yeast just doesn't rise that well) or if I have a large proportion of whole wheat flour (which isn't as strong as white/bread flour).

The reason I harp on King Arthur flour so much is that it's really very tasty-- and since the all-purpose flour is milled from stronger wheat than, say, General Mills' flour or Pillsbury, it makes good bread. Their 'better for bread' flour is even better. I've had a bread machine loaf from that flour actually pop the top of my bread machine.

[3-purple-irises.livejournal.com]

Yes, domesticity can be very nice. I just love to cook and to bake, especially when the weather is very cold like this week. When you have something baking in the oven, it just fills the house with that wonderful baking smell and it makes the house feel like home. So...now that you are in a domestic mood, do I hear the pitter patter of a little Girard's feet coming in the near future? :) *ducking and running*

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

Duck and Run indeed!!!!
I don't *like* children. I much prefer cats, and dogs. I'm not even very good at dealing with dogs! (though I adore my Caitlyn). So I think I need to get over that before even THINKING about the children thing...

[melaniesuzanne.livejournal.com]

What's the "other competition" for the fleur de lis stuff? Methinks I missed something.

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have known about it if strawberrykaren hadn't mentioned it, but per the Coronation website...

Fleur de Lis:
One of Her Majesty's royal whims is the use of fleur de lis. To further her whim, she is sponsoring a competition for any art featuring the fleur. There is no restriction on medium or time period. Documentation is encouraged but not required.

[melaniesuzanne.livejournal.com]

I completely missed that! Thanks :)

FlyLady Parody

[intrepida.livejournal.com]

The Personal Testimonial of Marta Silly, the "Busy BEE" (Bitches Excell Everywhere)

Once, dear reader, I was like you. My house was chaos, I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, and buried under a mountain of worthless STUFF. But I have found a WAY to change my home and my life, and if you follow my directions to the letter, you too, can enjoy a calm, beautiful, organized home.

In January of last year I decided that it was time to take control of the housework. I resolved to change one little thing about how I did my housework every month. My first act was to wear my patent-leather boots with six-inch, stiletto heels while doing my chores. I found that the discomfort of wearing them meant that I had to portion out my housework into small chunks for each day of the week. This is the first step of the Busy BEE system. Go to your friendly, neighborhood fetish supply store and buy youself the highest, tightest, shinyest footwear you can find. Every morning get dressed all the way down to these shoes. In addition to only doing a small ammount of housework each day I found that due to the limited mobility, that it was best if I divided the house into ZONES so that I didn't have to walk far at all......

*Bitches Excell Everywhere

(I didn't want to make this too long. I could do more. Things like enlisting HELP with a cattle prod and dog collar, and more acronyms (SASSY = Silly AcronymS SYndrome)

[emmycantbemeeko.livejournal.com]

Ohhh I know what you mean. I loved the flylady concept but I had to unsubscribe from the emails because GACK I'M CHOKING ON ALL THE SACCHARINE HELP. I just want to be allowed to be tidy and cranky at the same time...