I need my head examined

[stripey_cat]

tigerfort has been demanding black-out curtains for the bedroom for some time. (When I were a lass, I didn't have bedroom curtains for about a year - thanks, Mum - and had a streetlamp just outside the window. Anyway.) So, I finally got round to starting some this afternoon. For some reason best known to myself, I decided to hand sew them entirely. I

Comments

[mobbsy]

That last bit reminded me it had been too long since I last baked bread. Unfortunately, some combination of rather elderly yeast¹ and a lack of recent practice meant it didn't come out particularly well.

¹ I think it was a particularly old tin that was unearthed in recent kitchen renovations.

[stripey_cat]

Did you set the yeast going in some water first? If any of it is still alive, stirring it up with a cup of warm water and a teaspoon of sugar will get it going, and you only need to leave it for half an hour or so in this weather to get a really vigorous colony going from the smallest amount of starter. Alternatively, a new tin will only set you back about a pound, so your time-costs would soon exceed that.

[mobbsy]

I did activate it with a sugar solution, and that was the first clue things might not go well. There was some activity, so I left it for a while to give it a chance to multiply, but the dough still didn't rise as much as I'd like (and again, I gave it longer to prove than I normally would). It didn't help that the dough was rather too wet, but that was lack of recent practice rather than dodgy ingredients.

I have another tin of yeast, this was the last of an old tin I'd lost in the back of a cupboard.