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Cleaning Your Sifter
You sometimes come across recipes that call for sifted ingredients especially in baking. I always have had problems cleaning my sifter whether it's to avoid any rust or to make sure all the flour is gone and doesn't end up a caked up gross mess.
I make sure to use my sifter when it called for in recipes and I actually have 3, why you ask? Why not. 2 were given to me from my Mom that were probably my grandmother's and another I bought at a Tiki weekend in Lake George where they had people selling everything from tiki to kitschy. The one that I bought in Lake George is a nice display sifter, it still works mind you but the graphics are so fun and bright it shouldn't be hidden in my cupboards. So I look at it sitting in my window sill as I do my dishes.
So just this past weekend was Easter and I told both my Father in Law and Mom that I would provide the desserts for each get together. I decided on a pie my friend had made years ago. I got the recipe and she said just to buy the frozen crusts to avoid the work. Already a simple pie I decided against the frozen pie shell route and went out and bought a tub of Crisco.
After washing my sifter I turned it upside down onto my drying mat and noticed the buildup of old flour/cornstarch/icing sugar/salt/god-knows-what caked into crevices. *Insert dry heave* I tried soaking it in hot water and dish soap then taking a toothbrush to it but it wasn't helping, with such small area to work with the toothbrush bristles weren't sliding under the metal pieces and the mesh was too fine to allow the paste of ingredients to come out.
I decided to get out my gallon of vinegar that I keep to pickle and make house cleaning products with. I poured enough into a plastic bowl that my sifter would submerge into enough and warmed the vinegar in the microwave.
I set the sifter in the bowl of warm vinegar and placed the bowl in my kitchen sink that I had put hot water in to the keep the vinegar from cooling off too quickly. I let it sit in the vinegar for about 10 minutes, I then took 1/2 cup of baking soda and poured it into the sifter, right away it started reacting and bubbling, hoping it would agitate the paste stuck in there to come loose.
I added another 1/2 cup of baking soda about 15 minutes later and rinsed it off once it stopped bubbling.
It somewhat helped to clean it out but I still needed to get something in there to push out what was left. Toothpicks were out since they didn't bend or were too large to push into the small mesh. I found a box of these dental toothpicks/floss and decided to have a go. By then my husband was interested in my science project and offered to do the work of cleaning the paste out for me. I also think my husband knew how squeamish I get with certain things and textures. I dry heave with just the idea having to pull hair out of the shower drain. So my knight in shining armor picked away the paste until it was all clean.
After a few minutes and a final water rinse it was like brand new! I was so happy, weird I know, but the simple things in life sometimes are the things that do make you happy.
I am EXTREMELY proud of my pies too, this was the first time I made a double crust pie, I had only made pies that were topped with crumbles or whipped cream. Now that it doesn't seem so scary I will definately have to make more double crust pies in the future!
