Caveat Emptor Dot Com

Early on in my interwebs dealings, I learned to be very cynical and careful in my dealings.  There are a fair share of phonies and frauds on-line.

Can't Believe Everything You See on Pinterest

Pinterest is no exception to the rule of internet wariness...just because something looks good in photos, doesn't necessarily mean it is good.

Case in point...I saw a link to a recipe for 30 minute baguettes...from start to finish.  Just typing this, I find myself saying, "What were you thinking?"

My version of the bread...the lumpiness was done on purpose to make it look more rustic!

The photo of the bread look good, and the recipe used a twist on a bread baking technique that I already knew to make a crispy crust, so I thought I'd try it.

First of all, the recipe took about an hour, not 30 minutes.  Second of all the bread was bland and boring, and even the crust wasn't as crisp as the technique I already knew.

Their basic recipe was to create a simple, moist bread dough (very warm water, sugar, yeast, salt and flour), cut the dough in fourths and create four long strands of dough...twist two of the strands together and then twist the other two and bake them in an oven that you had just dumped ice into the bottom of (I pre-heated a cast-iron skillet in the bottom, so I didn't have to dump ice on the floor of my oven).

Suffice it to say, bread dough needs to rise if you want any flavor at all.  Also, putting boiling water in a pan at the bottom of the stove works much better than ice.

Thaddeus' sister makes something she calls Cuban bread in a very similar way, but hers is much better...I'll stick with that if I need a relatively quick bread.

Current Knitting/Spinning

I've almost finished the upper back section of the Icelandic wool pullover I'm making.

Soon, I'll be grafting the shoulder sections, working a neck band and picking up to knit the sleeves.

I also started a new spinning project...I have a ton of roving that I need to start making into yarn, so I started with this lovely Black Bunny Fiber roving.  It's a superwash Blue-Face Leicester in a colorway Carol calls Ruby something.  It's very nice to spin.

I'm still not sure how I'll finish the singles from this...I think I'll test-ply a few different options to see what I like best.