The pots -- NY Times No-Knead Bread

The yellow pot is marked 3 qt. It is ceramic.

The orange-y pot is a "Mario Batali" pot made by Copco in China. It is enamel on cast iron with a cast stainless lid knob.

More No-Knead Bread

I have my 7th loaf of no-knead bread in the oven. This looks to be the high-bold loaf I have been searching for.

I have been experimenting with the recipe and have made the following discoveries.

I read at World Table, a Sullivan Street Bakery site which to Jim Lahey has posted, that when Mark Bittman said instant yeast, he meant regular, granular yeast, like the Fleischman’s that I used in the first loaf. However, I had purchased Red Star Quick-Rise which also contains sorbitan monostearate, and ascorbic acid and I have used that for the last 4 loaves.

I fiddled with the salt. In the first six loaves I stuck with the recipe and used 1-1/4 t. sea salt. In loaf 7 I used 2 t. kosher salt as per the discussion on eGullet . It has loads of wonderful feedback (191 posts over the last week) and lots of pictures.

I also SCOOPED the flour into a 1 cup measuring cup and sort of shook it to level it. I have been going with 1-1/2 c. water since the second loaf. I use coarse corn meal on my kitchen towel for the second rise. On this loaf I did my second rise in a banneton and I think that helped support the loaf during the second rise. It also made it easier to plop into the preheated pot–no burns, less cornmeal flying around the kitchen..

After all of the excitement of the first few loaves I went to Sur la Table to price a 5.8 qt Kiwi colored Le Creuset that I had been coveting. Instead, I bought a Copco enameled cast iron pot with a metal handle on the top (a lovely pumpkin colored Mario Batali model–6 qt. size – half the cost). I had used that for several loaves. For loaf No. 7, I went back to the ceramic pot (3 qt.). I baked it at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, top on, and then 22 minutes with the top off. I got the best oven spring on this loaf and it is the prettiest yet. Have to wait to see the inside and taste it.

7th Loaf

No-Knead Bread

I know, I know. I haven’t been blogging. I knew when I saw the article in last Wednesdays’ New York Times about Jim Lahey’s bread recipe , that a new/old obsession would take over my being.

So I just took loaf number 4 out of the oven and I’m blogging about this because I need to talk about it.

I innocently started with loaf 1 to avoid cleaning my studio.

I didn’t bother to try to find out what instant yeast was. I was so impressed with this recipe because it seems as if it requires nothing special. And in the video, Jim Lahey emphasizes that the recipe is very forgiving.

In loaf one I used three cups of bread flour measured by SPOONING the flour into the cup. I followed the Times recipe (not the video ) and used 1-5/8 c. water. I used 1-1/4 t. sea salt and 1/4 t. Fleischmann’s Bread Machine Yeast (ideal for all RapidRise recipes). It contains only yeast and ascorbic acid.

Since I hadn’t baked bread for a few months, I proofed the yeast by putting it in about 1/4c. warm water (1/4 c. of the 1-5/8 called for in the recipe) that contained a pinch of sugar. Otherwise I followed the Times recipe.

Of course the probable reason for baking bread last Wednesday was that our heating system was on the fritz and it was cold in the house but I put the bread to rise on top of the refrigerator with the idea that it was the warmest place in the house.

I actually let it rise for 24 hours. I baked it in a 3 qt. ceramic casserole with a lid: preheat oven at 450 degrees with pot in the oven for at least 30 minutes. Plop bread into casserole, seam side up. It seems disastrous but shake the pot and all is well. Put lid on and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake an additional 15-22 minutes, et voilà!

I should have taken pictures but I didn’t. Go to Toast to see what my dough and bread looks like. It’s so amazing. What crumb! What crust! The loaf sings! My house smells fabulous!

Update

It has been almost three months since I posted an entry. What have I accomplished in this interval? A lot, actually. I’ve done workshops with Sue Benner and Miriam Nathan-Roberts that have helped enormously in my design and color studies. I just completed my third workshop in the Drawing to Increase Creativity series with Hollis Chatelain – portraits! And Melody Johnson doesn’t know this but I’ve started a “mentorship” with her! Her tutorials on dyeing have helped me to focus my interests. I am so thankful for the generosity of these teachers.

I think that I started this blog because I thought it would give me a chance to show my work to people who don’t know me. I could not continue without the feedback I receive from friends and family but I know they love me. I think that the reason I don’t use my blog for the reasons I started it is because I still lack confidence: confidence in both my written work and my art. For the next three months I will try to silence that inner critic and just do the work. My goal is to post frequently, perhaps once per week.

Rather Fabulous: EBHQ and Voices in Cloth 2006

I can't believe that I'm so fortunate to be a member of this wonderful group, the East Bay Heritage Quilters. The biennial show of one of the largest and oldest quilt guilds is this weekend in Oakland, CA. This show is always so terrific and this year's special exhibit puts it over the top. The Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection features works by Ruth McDowell, Jill Rumoshosky Werner, Elizabeth Barton, Libby Lehman, Sue Benner, Noriko Endo, Dijanne Cevaal, Jean Ray Laury, Carol Taylor, Sylvia Einstein, Joan Colvin, June O. Underwood, Valerie Goodwin, Freddy Moran, Jane Sassaman, Cynthia Corbin, Caryl Bryer Fallert, and more.

This is a non-juried and non-judged show. I was delighted to submit my quilt, Yellow Pot. This was created from a study I made in response to the first Simple Still Life challenge. I wish I took part in this every month. Thank you Debra Roby for providing the inspiration for my quilt.

Maps and Landscapes

Seeing Diane's newest work in her entry, View from Above, reminded me that I had intended to post about a small piece that I had finished. It is about 16" x 18". I imagined a series of map/landscape quilts. I have always enjoyed combining piecing with applique and was challenged by the orange commercial fabric that is the background.

Daphne odora 'Aureo-marginata'

The Daphne is in bloom. Actually, the first blossoms opened on Saturday. But today was the first time that I was knocked out by the perfume. I probably shouldn't be blogging about this plant--it might be bad karma. I've had such good luck with it. It graces the garden by my front door and the fragrance is intoxicating. My goal has been to have fragrance year-round in this garden. I'm still working on it. 

New Year's Walk -- Mimosa

Probably Acacia baileyana, this is one of the first blooms of the New Year. My neighbor called this mimosa. I love that name. I moved to California from the midwest, after a short stint in Boston, and this was a discovery for me. The bright, cheerful, fuzzy-looking balls were kind of magical. The foliage is a feathery, finely cut blue-grey. The blossoms are very fragrant and when we first moved here I would cut big bunches and bring it into the house. It seeds out and some find this plant weedy. It might be the California answer to Forsythia, which is not widely grown. 

The New Year's Walk

Rick and I took the New Year’s walk early to beat the rain forecast for today. Growing up at 96th and Madison in New York, Rick and his dad and brother would traditionally take a walk around a body of water on New Year’s day. The first walk was in 1954 in Central Park. He never misses--rain, snow, etc. I joined in on the tradition in 1976, in Berkeley, to and around Lake Temescal. Our traditional walk in Orinda is from our house to Lake Cascade, around and back.

We are bracing for the next storm to hit Northern California. Is this the Pineapple Express? The forecasters have been saying that the storms are stacked up all the way to the Philippines . When we went on our walk it was 54 degrees and the low last night wasn’t much colder. We awoke Saturday morning to water in our kitchen from a flooded patio from very heavy rains Friday night and Saturday morning. My rain gauge was full at 5-1/2". We were lucky. No power-outs. But the soil is saturated and the next storm is supposed to move through very quickly.

Cyclamen

Florist cyclamen can be planted out in my Sunset Zone 16 garden. What a good idea to protect the beautiful heart-shaped leaves from slugs. Too bad I didn't! The leaves alone make the plant a worthy object in the garden but I love the furled buds. I really should plan to plant some of the choice species. The small ones are so charming in my friend Janine's garden. C. cilium is said to be fragrant as is C. purpurescens. I think C. coum is available and C. hederifolium is said to be easy.

What was I thinking?

So, I celebrated my 57th birthday on December 24th and I got braces on my teeth on December 29th. Aside from the initial feeling that he had erroneously installed barbed-wire in my mouth and the fact that it is taking me 30 minutes to floss, all is well. Was it the ortho who said, "you look much younger" (yeah, like a teenager!)? I only have about 728 days to go, but who’s counting? Actually, this is something that I’ve wanted to do for years (and I wish now, that I would have just done it). I’m still a little anxious because two perfectly good teeth have to go but that’s next month. Happy New Year!

How can it be November already?

I seem to remember a time when I was always waiting for something special in the way distant future. Hmmm...that's a thought..

No time for thoughts. I don't know how those Artful Quilters do it. Blog, read blogs, make quilts, enter competitions, take care of themselves, take care of their families...

I have been occupied. I have a picture for the Simple Still Life and hope I haven't been drummed out of the group.

Surrender to the Dye: The Experiment Begins

That’s quoting Mrs. Mel. So I have just finished ironing my first batch. I read somewhere that painting fabric should be process-oriented, not product-oriented and I assumed that dyeing would be the same. This advice went something like this: don’t work with a specific project in mind, just have fun. Well, I did that, sort of. Cynthia Corbin’s supply list recommended the following for fabrics

Solids, mottled, hand dyes, "solid-ish" fabrics 1/2 yard to 1yard pieces; good range of colors; range of values dark to light (have some very light and some very dark).

Well, I don’t do hand-dyes. And I am way over my fabric budget. And hand-dyes are so precious. So I thought this was the perfect time to experiment.

I had been accumulating supplies and was typically indecisive about what fabric to use. The Kona turned out to be kind of "flabby" and I think I like the Pimatex the best. I now read in the Dharma catalog that the Kona is 60 x 60 ( 4.4 oz / sq. yd) and the Pimatex is 133 x 78 (3.7 oz/sq yd). Pimatex might be manufactured by Kaufman but I’m not sure. I have a small amount of something called Hoffman PFD that I will also try for my next experiment.

I dyed small pieces of silk (Habotai 8mm) in each batch and almost swooned over the pieces before they had dried but they are much better wet than dry. I’m still glad I tried this.

I was hoping for a mottled appearance so after adding the dye solution to the fabric, and scrunching the fabric around, I poured some extra solution into the plastic tubs and it pooled at the bottom. That was good. The "purple" sample is the most mottled. There are issues with how the red dye dissolved. I still love everything.

I ended up with 22 fat quarters and I’m thrilled with my results and can’t wait to play again. I think dyeing could be my next addiction. I don’t know how anyone could be depressed using yellow dyes.

I'm Dyeing

I’ve been dyeing. Everyone was getting in on the fun and I’ve succumbed. I’m having a blast. I’ve used the Lazy Dyer methods of Mrs. Mel . I’m a scientific sort so I’ve been trying this out on a small scale, with different PFD fabrics, keeping a log of what I’ve tried. The hardest bit is the record keeping.

I made my first trip to the shrine, Dharma Trading. I bought some of their Pimatex PFD cotton. I also gave myself permission to buy their Habotai 8mm silk, just for fun. I have no use for silk but it was irresistible and it was for science. I can buy Kona PFD at my job as that is what they carry and I used that too.

It feels so legitimate to be dyeing my own. What’s with that? Is it more art-like? Is it the hand-dyed thing? I still love commercial fabrics, honest.

I’m taking a class with Cynthia Corbin tomorrow. She is the speaker at EBHQ on Monday night. The class on Saturday is Abstract Forms – Getting It Together.

I hope to have some pictures to post on Sunday.

Rejection!

The e-mail came. 850 submissions. 225 acceptances. Kelp was not accepted. I am patting myself on the back for having the courage to submit a quilt, an art quilt. I had made a commitment to myself to finish it in time. I got that done. I brought it in to the Bedford Gallery (although I needed to ask my friend Susan to go with me!).

I just returned from picking up the quilt and had an interesting experience. Another woman, my age, arrived at the same time as me. She mentioned that she had received an e-mail that she hadn’t wanted to receive. She expressed many of the same feelings as I was having. This was her first time submitting work for an exhibition. She was disappointed–she had convinced herself that her work would be accepted. When they returned my quilt, the woman asked to see it and told me that she liked it!

Susan and I plan to go to the exhibit to see what was accepted. The question now is, why didn’t the juror select this piece? My friend Candice also submitted two quilts, neither of which were accepted. I still like what I did. I’m wondering about making it larger, suitable for my guild show.

I Can't Believe It

Kelp

I entered a quilt in a juried mixed-media show. My friend Susan told me about this show, Local Voices: Defining Community Through Art, at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. This is the part I of the brochure that I liked: a dialog between community and visual artists who live in Contra Costa County, emerging artists...

So the deal was that today and yesterday they were accepting submissions (no photos, no slides–the actual works); they will be juried tomorrow; an email will be sent out on Friday. I brought in a new work that I’m calling Kelp. I finished it today. I took a poor quality picture of it but here it is. I was in a rush.

It is 12-1/2" by 31". I struggled with the picture: I must figure out how to photograph something that has high contrast.

I also struggled with finishing this. I had intended to do a "pillowcase" finish with no binding but I was afraid that all of the quilting had made it too stiff and I wouldn’t get a nice knife edge. On a prior piece I had used a very thin batt and hand quilted it. After squaring it up, I put a new "back" on and used Melody’s Escape Hatch method. On this one I bailed and put on an ever so skinny binding, so as to appear more arty than quilty. The other issue was that if I put another "back" on, the quilting would be covered and I really liked how the back looked.

And real artists don’t show the backs of the their work. Oh well...

And I almost forgot. Another major artist failure: When I was quilting it I forgot all about SIGNING THE FRONT. I left no room to sign it. Now they will know for sure that I am not an artist. I will have to continue to emerge...

But the major struggle was whether or not to offer it for sale. I think if I had finished it a week ago and had started on something new I wouldn’t have felt so attached to it. And I couldn’t come up with an amount. I felt very strongly that if I was a real artist, I would of course sell it. That’s what artists do, right?

Kelp: The back

Kelp back

More on the Simple Still Life

This is really just an attempt to get two posts in during the month of August. Where did the summer go?

I am so glad that I participated in the Simple Still Life Challenge. I really felt that I had no business starting something new but having the deadline really forced me to work on something. I really loved seeing everyones’ take on the same subject. It was good for me that most of the participants posted at or near the deadline so that I worked without too much influence as to what everyone else was doing.

I also really appreciated that others showed steps in their process. I will do that for the next challenge, if only for my own record.

I did use Photoshop Elements at the outset and it helped me to "see" the subject by eliminating detail. I was amazed at what so many of the others were able to do with Photoshop. And I’m thinking about further exploring what Elements can do. But I’m reminding myself that I want to work in fiber and that this is just one of my tools. It seems formidable to figure out all of that stuff.

Most of all, it was wonderful to receive so many encouraging comments.

Our guild, EBHQ, does not meet in July so tonite seems like the first meeting of the year. Doesn’t it always seem as if the year starts in September, when school starts? Elizabeth Barton is the speaker and I am really looking forward to the meeting.

Simple Still Life

simple still life 8/27

Well, it would be hard to get too much closer to the deadline.

Here is what I did. I tried fooling around with Deb’s photo in Photoshop. I really liked the negative space in the image I saw. I decided to make a small piece in fabric and everything is fused. I would ordinarily have pieced the background and appliqued the elements but this was fun. I had hoped to quilt it but haven’t gotten to it yet. It is about 10-1/2 inches square.

Thanks Deb!