Dear weaving gurus, I am hoping someone can help answer a question that popped into my head at a sourdough making class last night. The instructor used tea towels to line her proofing baskets and mentioned whatever you use needs to be lint-free (sticky dough + lint = bad combination). Naturally, I would like to make some custom towels for my bread-baking needs (obviously!), but I have absolutely no idea how lint-free towels come to be! Is it in the yarn preparation or some mysterious finishing process? Does anyone know? I use 2/8 cotton for my towels from Maurice Brassard and I certainly vacuum out plenty of lint bunnies from under my loom every now and then, so I would go ahead and say those towels are not lint-free. Is there a different kind of cotton I should be using? Is it even possible with cotton? Is linen lint-free? Would love some help figuring this out! Please and thank you in advance.
Making lint-free cloth
Hi Olena, I make my own bread too, so I know what you're talking about. I have some handwoven towels using 8/2 regular cotton and they were sett a little tighter than I would normally want a towel, but they make great towels for my bread to rise in without sticking. Mind you....I do flour them before I start. I like 18 epi for a drapey towel but these are probably 20 with a good firm beat, or a double beat. They are tight. If the structure is tight then you don't get lint. Linen is also great if it is a fine linen, or 16/2 cotton sett tightly would be good too...like around 28-30 epi for p.w. Hope this helps :)
Brilliant! Thank you so much, Jane. Once again, you make it easy-peasy. Not something I would have thought about on my own! So thankful to have this as a resource.
P.S. AND you make bread? Can you get any cooler??!
Well Olena, as you know....making bread is pretty easy. I just make a no knead bread. 4 ingredients, flour, water, salt and a pinch of yeast. Mix it up, walk away for 8 hours, come back. Roll it around for 1 minute, rise, bake, and the best part, slather it with marmalade and eat it :)
Oh, and I flour my tightly handwoven teatowel where it sits to rise.
Ha! Well I'll know what to bring you next time I'm on Vancouver Island and have some time for an extra ferry trip when the studio is open for in-person shopping/visits. My favourite marmalade recipe is from zucchini of all things, with ginger and lemon for flavouring. You only taste the ginger and lemon but have this fabulous texture from the grated zucchini. It's absolutely perfect for slathering.
Wow, Olena and Jane! You've inspired me to try both the lint-free towel and the no knead bread! If somebody on this thread adds that they make their own butter and jam, I'm in trouble! LOL
...I do make my own jam (my partner and I ripped out our front lawn and replaced it with a giant strawberry patch a few years ago; best lawn replacement ever!). I have also made butter in the past...Sorry! lol
Wow, something else to do with zucchini’s. Can you share that recipe. We always have way to many zucc’s. Have never made butter :)
I most definitely can. It deserves to be passed around. The recipe I use is a much condensed set of instructions that's been stuck to my fridge for years (on a rather crusty by now piece of paper) , but I've tracked down the original instructions online: https://practicalselfreliance.com/zucchini-marmalade/
I usually reduce the sugar in any kind of jam recipes quite significantly, so it's very likely that I did it for this one as well (but I also always recommend making a small batch of the recipe as written first before tweaking it). Happy marmalading!
Thank you Olena, I’ll definitely try this out come July when we begin our over abundance of zucc’s. Awesome :)