Making Space

How traditional pitchforks were made.

If you have a chance, help preserve this nearly forgotten knowledge in your stories somewhere!

Always wipe clean with a wet rag or sponge after cooking, minimize scrubbing, simmer water in the pan to soften really stuck bits. Then dry fully and put just a smidge of your oil/fat of choice on it before putting the pan away. And liberally re-season (the coating with oil/fat and baking at 400 part) as needed if you notice things sticking more!

I haven’t had a chance to light a fire in 5 years, because I’ve been living in the city, and there’s no backyard, and no public places to light one legally. Since other people got away with a fire on the remote riverbank, I decided I could too. I’ve gotten so nervous, because what if my fire-lighting skills have gone away and I couldn’t light one anymore? And what if I didn’t have the correct tools to roast chestnuts anyway? All I had was an old, metal, twisted pan. And to make it more interesting, it rained the morning I decided to go for it.

So I’m there, walked for 45 minutes just to get there, with my dry sticks, and my chestnuts, and some newspaper and matches, excited and nervous. I knew I couldn’t make a big enough fire with only a few sticks, so I gathered the wet pieces of wood all over the place; they were wet from the outside, but inside, they were all dried wood. So I calculated, that the fire will be very smoke-heavy, because all that wetness will create smoke, but once the fire dries the wood, it will burn. I had fun breaking apart the branches with my hands, made me feel powerful.

I put some rocks in the bottom of the fire pit, to make sure it was dry, and for the fire to have airflow underneath, it’s good for a fire to draw oxygen from below. I made a little cone with the dry sticks around the newspapers. The fire lit up on my second try!

To actually roast something, you need the fire to burn for a while, reach a certain temperature, and create a good amount of ember. Ember is hotter than the fire and that’s what you want for roasting. My fire struggled a lot due to the wet wood, and I had to tend to it fervently, but at one point I figured it was hot enough for what I wanted it for, and I put my little improvised tool on it.

I have the feeling this

pumpkin

might make up for it:

I present:

I called it that bc it’s literally nothing to make it. No hassle, bother, effort, nothing lmao

It’s written for me in my recipe collection so I’ll explain:

All amounts are in grams.

Chuck the flour and water in a bowl and mix till it’s incorporated.

Let it sit. Literally just leave it there. Don’t bother covering it. Just. Nothing. This is called the “autolyse”. It’s bangin, does all the work for you. Let’s the starch fully hydrate before being worked :)

10 mins is good but you can let it go much longer if you want/if you forget about it. Longer is generally better but legit 10 mins will do it if you’re impatient. Whatever you like.

Mix the sugar and salt and yeast in a bit of room temp water and chuck it in the dough.

Give it a little mix to get it all in there, maybe a minute or two. By hand is fine. Stand mixer is ideal because lazy.

Put a splash of oil into a clean bowl or casserole dish or whatever you have, and coat the inside surface.

Put the dough in the oiled container. It’ll be pretty wet so i oil my hands too. Let it sit for a few mins to relax.

Stretch and fold time! Doesn’t have to be coil fold like I wrote, that just my preference. Here’s some pics:

Let it rest after this, for like 20-30 mins. Then repeat the stretch and fold. Rest again and repeat once more for a total of 3 times. You can do more if you want but 3 will be fine :) then rest once more.

Generously flour a surface. Now you can divide the dough into whatever. I sort of aimed for loose almost ciabatta style rolls, no real shaping. I just gently tucked the edges under the dough. Here’s what they look like

Let them prove somewhere nice and toasty. Time depends on temp but like an hour is usually good. I let mine prove in the sun lmao it’s one of my fave ways of proving. But obvs not necessary a warm spot is fine. Loosely cover them with plastic wrap laid over the top. Not sealed just like gently laid on top to trap some humidity.

Bake them at like 170C till they look like this, about 12-18 mins usually.

Et voila!