Table of Contents

[Bread Molding]

Name: Vivian Mellon Snyder

Date and Time: In Class Molding

2021.05.17

Location: Nuss, New York NY

Subject: Using Bread from “Breadmaking” to Create Perfume Bottle Molds

I wanted to pick something to mold that was small (since we have a limited amount of wax, and I thought this would be more forgiving), but with a solid shape (as in, not so thin or detailed that it would be fragile when rendered in wax). I chose some miniature bottles of perfume that I had laying around. They’re made of glass, which I thought would prevent them from sticking to the bread.

To recap on the information I had available, here’s an excerpt of the assignment:

You are tasked with baking bread, loaves of which will become molds into which you will cast wax or sulfur. While modern bread is typically made with yeast, a common historical rising agent was a sourdough starter. Some of you have been given sourdough starter which you can use for making the bread for the molds. Others may wish to explore creating their own sourdough starters at home (there are many online resources about how to do this safely). After looking into these options, you may logistically only be able to bake bread with yeast (and that is ok). Start experimenting!

The process and guidelines that I interpreted from the folio (in my own words) is this:

• Choose an object to “mold,” or press into the bread pith to make a relief
• The bread should be fresh, in other words, have a good amount of heat and moisture, to create a good mold
• The object being molded should be left in the hot bread until it cools, so that the shrinking bread can capture the finer details of the objects
• The fresher the bread, the better. Optionally, you can reheat the bread to have it retract even more.
• You can wait until the bread cools to cast, or wait until it dries out. The drier it is, the smaller the cast and finer the detail.

I was ready to create molds on Monday, but the freshest bread that I had was from Sunday night. Instead of baking new bread (and I was already overwhelmed by several large loves), I sliced up what I had into large blocks. I decided to go with the method of reheating the bread (not twice as the author suggested, but just once). I did this in the microwave until the bread was steaming hot.

It would have been more historically accurate to use the oven, but I imagined that the moister I could keep the bread, the more easily I would be able to create a mold. The dry heat of an oven would have turned the pith into toast.

With the freshly microwaved day-old bread, I took my perfume bottles and pressed as hard as I could. I tried to squeeze the edges of the bread tight along the edges of the perfume, to make as strong of a frame as I could.

Then, I decided to leave the bottles in the bread until the bread cooled down to room temperature. If the bread would shrink as it cooled, I wanted it to shrink against the detailed edges of the perfume bottles, like a vacuum seal.

I checked the molds after the bread cooled, but replaced the bottles of perfume to the molds to prevent further shrinking until the next day’s class.

 I forgot to take any pictures or video of the process of pressing into the bread. Above, though, you can see, generally, what the molds ended up looking like.

A NOTE: I should have cut larger chunks of bread than I did. The chunks were cut only slightly larger than the bottles themselves, but I think my molds would have come out much better if they had some breathing room. You can see, above, how the edges of the mold started to crack.

Name: Vivian Mellon Snyder

Date and Time: 

2021.05.18

Location: In-class (virtually) New York NY

Subject: Casting with the molds

The first image from my notes is actually from the in-class molding. Based on prior class experience, Naomi and Pamela encouraged us to use a brush and oil to ease the process of removing casts from molds. I didn’t have any oil, so I melted down some butter and used that, painting it along the inner mold and out along the edges for a safety net.

Most people in the class used a clean can over the stovetop. Since the dorms have communal kitchens, I used a cosmetic wax warmer that I had on hand instead. I washed out a cat food can and poured my wax beads in there, then put the tin in the warmer. It was pretty slow to melt down the wax, but it did work. Above, you can see my setup and the beads starting to liquefy.

Because this was such a messy process, I kept forgetting to take pictures. But you can see one of my casts fresh out of the mold here. The butter was definitely helpful when pulling out the cast figure. The first one I made actually fell apart, since I tried to take it out while it was still warm. So, make sure you wait until the cast is BOTH (a) opaque and (b) totally cool to the touch! Otherwise your’s might break apart like mine.

There were some imperfections in the mold itself evident, as well as bit of bread stuck to the cast. I found that soaking the cast in cool water both helped the cast to harden and helped to remove these crumbs and leftover oil. I also took a paring knife and cleaned up the edges and imperfections, which left something like this:

Here’s another mold, freshly made and crumby:

Another goal I had in-class was to make twin casts and stick them together, to have a dimensional object. My day-old bread was still moist enough at this point to have some flexibility. By being careful when removing the first cast, I was able to use the molds a second time, and I was left with several pairs of casts.

Totally liquid wax didn’t really work as an adhesive, but letting hot wax cool to a translucent paste did the trick. First, I used some of this paste between the two halves. Then, along the seams, I poured liquid wax into any gaps to fill them in. This made more ridges and imperfections, which I cleaned up with a knife.

The best outcome of this process looked like this:

Unfortunately, the seams didn’t come out perfect, but I was still happy enough with the results. Here’s the other one I made:

This one didn’t come out as well.

Name: Vivian Mellon Snyder

Date and Time: 

2021.05.19

Location: Nuss, New York NY

Subject: Casting with old, stale bread

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see whether older, harder, more shrunken bread made a better cast like the author suggested. Remember, I made my bread on Sunday, made the molds on Monday, and did first casts on Tuesday. By this point, it was Wednesday, and my bread was CRISPY. I poured the little bit of wax that I had leftover into the remaining, best-preserved mold.

Some takeaways from comparing the fresher and older molds:

• There was no noticeable improvement in the detail of older molds
• The staler the bread, the MUCH MUCH harder it is to remove the cast. I was only able to use old molds once, because I had to break the bread apart (careful not to break the cast).
• It’s much harder to remove the crumbs from stale bread, since they tend to “grab” onto the wax. Cleanup of the casts was a lot harder, since I had to soak them for longer and rub off embedded crumbs.

 My cast came out okay, but I’d say it wasn’t worth the extra hassle, and it was a bummer to only be able to use the mold once.

Here, you can see the casts side by side! Not too shabby, but I’d try it again with same-day bread, if I could.

And here are the casts beside their role models! This picture is pretty helpful for seeing what detail was captured and what wasn’t. The geometric design on the Tory Burch ld came out surprisingly well, and so did the ridges on the smaller perfume.