No Need to Knead Bread

Is there anything better than loaf of homemade bread? I have huge sweet tooth but homemade bread trumps pies and cakes any time. I don't like to knead -wondering if I've done it long or hard enough. I don't have a warm place to raise the bread so I'm never sure I've let it rise enough.

A few years ago the NY Times ran a recipe for 18 hour bread here that required no kneading and no warm "rising closet". I made it for awhile but could never get my act in gear 18 hours ahead of time. The next year the Times ran another bread recipe here that only needed 2 hours. I liked the second recipe but preferred the directions of the first so I combined them.

Ingredients

1 1/2 Tablespoons dried yeast (1 and 1/2 packets)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

6 1/2 cups of all purpose flour (although I've found any flour or combination work)

3 cups hot tap (100 degrees) water

corn meal

Tools

large bowl

2 - 1 quart saucepan and lids (although any saucepan works - small ones will result in tall loaves; large ones, shallow loaves.)

You can cook this bread anyway you want; as a pizza dough, rolls or rectangular pan loaves. I like the artisanal look of round ones.

Dissolve yeast and salt in 3 cups of hot tap water in a large bowl. Stir in 6 1/2 cups of flour until there is no dry flour. Cover with a kitchen towel and allow to rise for 2 hours.

Half an hour before you wish to cook your bread, heat your oven to 450 degrees and place your 2 saucepans in the oven with lids on. Allow to heat for 1/2 hour. Take your pans out of the oven, remove lids and sprinkle with corn meal. Cut the bread dough in half, gently form into loose balls. Drop into the pans and shake to distribute the dough. *note - the Times calls for a second rising but I've never found it necessary.

Cover the pans with the lids and bake (at 450) for 30 minutes. Remove the lids and cook (450) for another 20 minutes.

My pans are a tiny bit narrower at the top making removing the bread a challenge. I wait until the bread cools to coax the bread out with my hands.

This recipe makes 2 loaves, but if you want a larger loaf, use the whole recipe in a dutch oven or soup pan.

Isn't this beautiful?

The bread has a crunchy crust and a heavy body filled with holes, like a rustic french bread.

Wrap in cellophane, tie with a ribbon and believe me, this will be the best hostess gift EVER.

Tagged Lamp

Shipping tags, the darlings of altered artists. A more practical application perhaps? Why not as a lamp shade?

Materials:

Lamp shade (just the wire skeleton)

rebar wire (or similar stiff but bendable wire)

black acrylic paint (optional)

large shipping tags (30 for this sized lamp)

Tools:

copy machine

Download pdf file of Edison light bulbs. Print out this download and then print it on a copy machine. Remove the strings from the shipping tags and tape them over each light bulb. Hand feed the paper with taped tags through the copy machine. The light bulbs should appear on the tags.

Cut shade cloth off of lamp shape revealing the wire skeleton. If the shade has no connecting wires between the top and bottom, cut three 5" pieces of rebar wire. With pliers, bend over the top and bottom to form hooks. Place hooks over the top and bottom skeleton hoops and crimp and wrap wire to form the shade shape. Paint the skeleton black.

Put the strings back onto the tags and tie them onto both tiers of the wire shade. Turn on for a fun look.

This would make a terrific chandelier over a dining table like this one.

Chippendale Mirrors on the Cheap

I'm fascinated that you can buy a beveled mirror for a dollar at the Dollar Tree. Just go into the candle section where they have round, rectangle and square mirrors. I found an oval mirror (not beveled) in the frame aisle. I can't guarantee that the oval ones will always be there, but they've had the beveled ones for years. They do sell out so you might have to go to several stores or stalk the one in your neighborhood.

Wouldn't it be fun to turn them into fancy Chippendale mirrors?

Download and print the various shapes on card stock:

here

here

and here

Print on cardstock and cut out.

I  primed and painted some Masonite I already had to match my walls. Then I centered the pattern on the Masonite and traced around the outside. 

 Using black acrylic paint and a steady hand, I filled in the various mirrors. They look like a bunch of Rorschach ink blots don't they? (My Masonite was only 10 inches tall so I folded the longer mirrors in the middle to shorten them - the patterns are 8 1/2" x 11")

 I used a heat gun, pealed off the rubber feet on the beveled mirrors and carefully removed the oval mirror from it's frame. Then I used double stick weatherstripping tape to attach the mirrors to their frames.  Drill a small hole in the top of the mirror frames and hang them on your wall or do as I did and lean them in the back of a bookcase.

Although I've done these in black, I can imagine a whole wall of these in variety of bright colors in a powder room.

French Soap

I've used this idea on candles and wondered if it would work on soap, but first you need to find a square (or rectangular) cake of soap. Some soaps are contoured. They won't really work for this application.

 I found a french label on the Graphics Fairy here and resized it in Photoshop. I printed it out and placed it on the bed of my copier (not computer printer). Next I taped a piece of ordinary white tissue to a piece of copy paper and hand fed it into the copier.

 I carefully cut out the tissue label and placed it on the soap cake.

 I wrapped it tightly with waxed paper and used a heat gun to melt the soap slightly to embed the label. Have an old credit card handy to press the label into the soft soap.

 I resized the label again so that it fit the box top and adhered it with glue.

The label will wash off, probably the first time you use the soap, but what an elegant presentation.

Painted Leather Flowers

I am the happy recipient of a bunch of leather upholstery samples. I've been scouring the internet to find new and unique things to make with them. Flowers. Who doesn't want leather flowers? The only problem is that most of my leather is brown. Who wants brown flowers? Frantic internet searching solved my problem.

Cut out two roundish pieces of leather about 1.5" and 2" in diameter. On the back, draw 5 circles for petals and cut some leaf shapes.

I cut out my shapes and used acetone on a paper towel to remove the finish from the leather. It took off some of the dye as well.

Allow the acetone to evaporate as it is flammable, then pick up your flower shape with needle nose pliers and hold one of the petals over a candle flame (backside toward the flame) until the petal curls, which happens in just a few seconds. Repeat until all of the petals are curled.

I heated the edges of the leaves to make them take on a more organic shape. 

Prime all of your pieces with diluted white acrylic paint - just those cheap bottles available anywhere. The real leatherworkers warn that ordinary acrylic will crack and peel so you need specific leather acrylic paint. Since one of the missions of CSMT is to use readily available materials and products, I used the paints I bought at Wal-Mart and Michael's. I didn't even use fabric paints which were recommended by several sources and yet, this seems to hold up very well. Perhaps if you are painting shoes or articles of clothing that get a lot of wear, you might want to invest in the leather paint, but I've tried to scrape this off and it doesn't budge.

I put two thin coats (supposedly thin also helps with the cracking problem) of acrylic color on top of my primer, heating the paint with a heat gun each time. I don't know if the heat gun is completely necessary but one source said that it helped bind the paint to the leather and besides, I'm always in a hurry.

At this point you have a matte finish on your leather - very unleatherlike. The leather police swear by leather finishers, neetsfoot oil and all of that special stuff. I had butcher's wax. I'm sure anything would work including carnuba car polish. I slathered some wax onto my little pieces, fully intending to hand polish. Instead, I heated the wax with my heat gun and much to my surprise, the unbuffed wax took on a nice sheen.

Fold the flowers and leaves into quarters and snip off the corners to make small holes.

Cut a very thin strip of dark leather about 4 to 6 inches long. Tie a knot in the middle and thread the ends through all of the holes; the smallest flowers shape first, then the largest and lastly the two leaves. Pull the strip snuggly and tie a single knot.

At this point you have a gorgeous leather flower to put in your hair, add to your shoe, your lapel or tie around your neck.  All for the price of a couple of little bottles of acrylic paint you probably have in your stash already.

Handmade Flower Pots

Once I spent a whole summer making handmade paper. I love the organic texture. Now I've found a way to make pots that look handmade without all of the work. Plus they cost about 9 cents each. How great is that?

Materials

fiber pots

lace

cording

white glue

Pam kitchen spray

gesso

acrylic paints

Tools

blender or food processor

mold

paint brush

Tear one of the pots into dime sized pieces. Place them in hot water and let sit for a 1/2 hour or so. Place the mixture in the blender, add a squirt of white glue and whirl away. If using a processor, first drain, then place in the processor, whirl, then add a bit of water and glue.

Place paper towels in a strainer and drain the paper mixture. Gather the paper towel and squeeze out as much of the water as you can. Spray your mold with kitchen spray. I used a silicone ice tray but you can use candy molds which are readily available at Michaels. Press the paper mixture into the molds; we are looking for a depth of about 1/8 inch or less. Allow to set up overnight. Unmold the next day. They won't be dry yet so stick them on a piece of waxed paper and place them in a very low oven for 15 minutes or so.

When the molded object is dry, glue it to the front of the pot. Glue lace around the top, Add cording to the top and bottom.

Saturate some cording with white glue. Twist two lengths together if necessary. Hold for a few minutes to set the twist. Make a gentle curve and place it on waxed paper. Set in a low oven until dry. Cut off the ends and glue the handle to the top of the pot. Allow to dry.

Coat the pot in gesso and allow to dry. A hair dryer will speed things up if you are as impatient as I am.

I painted the pot, embellishments and all, with my base color, blue. When dry, I used a dry brush and lightly hit the lace and cording with green paint. Another dry brush of yellow was used on the flower.

Normally I use brown shoe polish to antique things but this time I watered down white acrylic paint and brushed it all over my pot which I think alludes to the lime that forms on pots.

Plant flowers in them. Place them at each place setting a lovely, inexpensive favor. Great for a bridesmaid luncheon.

Strung Along For a Birthday

Every once in awhile you need a special birthday card. Try this one.

Download the letters that spell "Happy Birthday" here.

Materials

white card stock

small round kraft-paper box

thin ribbon

Tools

1" diameter hole punch

sharp scissors

glue stick

double stick tape (optional)

Print the birthday letters on a sheet of white card stock. Turn the hole punch upside down and place each letter in the middle of the opening. Punch.

Cut a 1/2" strip of paper from side of the paper then punch out all of the letters around the edges. Cut two lines along the inside edges of the punched holes (refer to the above picture) in order to reach the inside letters and punch them out.

Leave about 3 inches on the end of the ribbon then rub stick glue on the back of both "Y"s. Stick them together sandwiching the ribbon in between. Leave about a 1/2" space then place the "A"s on the ribbon as before. Repeat until all the letters are glued to the ribbon. Place the "happy" tag at the end. Leave a 6" tail on the ribbon then cut it at an angle.

With the sharp end of your scissors, poke one slot in the center of the bottom (excuse the mess but it is hard to take price tags off of these boxes) and two slots each 1/2" on either side of the center on the top. Thread the "Y" ribbon end through the bottom slot and the "happy" end up through one slot and down through the other slot on the box top. Glue or use double stick tape to adhere the ribbon ends to the box.

Accordion fold the letters on top of each other and place the top back on the box.

Wrap the thin strip of paper through the ribbon loop and around the box, glueing or taping the ends together on the bottom. Write a salutation.

Have your recipient tear off the paper strip and pull open the top using the ribbon loop. Shout "Happy Birthday" in case he can't read fast enough.