How to Mix and Shape Dough Explained Without Words in Two Minutes

April 14, 2016

...bout this video: Bakers use scales and so should you. Mixing dough entails making an incredible mess. Learning to shape dough requires practice. As regards point #3, my plan is to mix up some practice dough (I use the dead dough recipe in the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook but any bread dough will do) and practice over and over. As a professional once told me when I complimented her on her pizza shaping prowess, “It’s because I’ve done it 10,000 times.”...

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Islamic Geometric Patterns

Mr. Homegrown

May 2, 2016

Design

5 Comments

...ese shapes with just a compass and ruler. Here’s the square and hexagon: Starting with these basic shapes, you then do further subdivisions. Once the pattern is penciled out you start using ink to make the final design. Add color and texture and these basic patterns can become enormously complex, what David Wade calls “windows into the infinite”: So what can you do with this arcane exercise in geometry? Just look at some of the amazing things Brou...

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Harry Partch: Woodworker and Composer

Mr. Homegrown

May 12, 2016

Design, Music, Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...ying them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfZrNaLxH-0 You can see all of Partch’s instruments here. Partch’s music can be jarring at first. Then it grows on you. I think my favorite Partch composition is Daphne of the Dunes. It sounds like an artifact of an ancient culture that never (but should have) existed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa5ok_Ju_MY Partch pushed the cultural envelope so far that he’s often labeled (I think, disrespectfully)...

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Our new front yard, part 2: theory

Mrs. Homegrown

November 13, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening

12 Comments

...ch makes working on it real fun.) That might be one reason why the idea of making it into an orchard had so much appeal. When garden design books bother to address hillside gardens, they always feature much bigger hills than ours, and these hills feature expensive hardscaping, like artfully arranged imported boulders, fancy staircases which sweep along the contour of the hill, or dazzling water features. Nobody designs in 15 foot wide spaces stuff...

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Saturday Linkages: Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind

Mr. Homegrown

December 14, 2019

Saturday Linkages

Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind, John Everett Millais 1892. Ornament Making in the Octavia Lab ‘The Best Thing You Can Do Is Not Buy More Stuff,’ Says ‘Secondhand’ Expert Do This Before It Snows! Snow Blower Maintenance A wheel education: the environmental diploma you earn by bike Cypress Park’s “Egghead Stonehenge” takes a hit Notes on an afternoon inside John Portman’s Bonaventure Hotel Should I Worry About Death Cap Mushroooms in California? Video:...

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