Great thread!
@Raenia , the beeswax wraps should work fine, since you're going to need to use something. We also live in a very dry climate, and the top of our rising bread gets crusty unless it's covered with something fully moisture-proof. We sometimes use plastic produce bags (which I'll re-use until they develop holes -- I also use them to cover the convoluted top of the food processor when I'm using it without needing to use the feed tube to save on washing), but we also make several loaves of bread at once, leave the dough quite wet, and store it in the fridge in a 2-gallon container. Then when we're ready to bake it, I'll dump out one loaf's worth, add a bit more flour so I can shape it, and let it warm up/rise in a silicone baking mat, which I can then entirely transfer to the pre-heated casserole dish I'll be baking it in.
@sebi13 , we make not-strictly-sourdough -- each 1.5 gal mixture contains about 1/2 Tb yeast, but it's also got sourdough starter added, and we tend to just re-make it in the bottom of the same container, using the old european strategy of keeping a bit of the old dough to start the next batch. We started because all the bakeries we liked bread from closed down in May or so, and what was available in the bread department either sucked, or was super-expensive, or both. Also, I feed a household of 3-4, with 1-2 teenaged boys, so the sheer quantity of calories that flows through the kitchen is fairly high, and a good loaf of slow-rise bread will keep the troops pacified for a while...
I will point out that at some point this summer we watched a dozen or so videos of italian grannies making homemade pasta, and they almost all made the dough, then put it in a plastic bag to rest in the refrigerator for an hour or more before they rolled it out. So in that case the traditional makers were pleased to have the plastic bag option!
We've been making our own yogurt since I did a garbage audit and decided that yogurt containers were taking up a reasonable % of the trash. I should re-do the inspection and see what our big items are now... I bet we can now recycle the plastic bags that hold apples'n' stuff when I buy 5 lb bags, should look into that, too.
My latest "less to landfill" accomplishment was the lovely, warm, lightweight 100% synthetic sweater I'm wearing now -- it had a horrible funnel neckline, and was too boxy to be worn by an adult human being. 15 min with needle and thread (to change the neckline) and 10 min with a machine (to take in the sides) and it's now quite pleasant to wear. Since this thing is never going to decompose, I picked it up (for $1 at a thrift store sale) with the intention of making it wearable, rather than letting it get thrown out.
We also compost (both in our yard, and courtesy of the city), make our own soap, bread, granola, and 95% or so of our food, use cloth for cleaning most messes, and tend to buy pantry staples in the largest containers that make financial sense. Or paper bags, in the case of flour, which oddly seems to be less expensive at Kroger in 5 - 10 lb bags. Although we do eat meat, most years we buy it from a local rancher, and the processor mostly wraps it in butcher paper (there's a bit of plastic beneath it, but no styrofoam trays or anything like that). I'm definitely reading along for more ideas!
