Cleaning an Apron

Toast
John Ambrose on 11 Dec 2009 at 14:02

Testing the limits of the phrase "there is no such thing as a dumb question"...

My heavy cotton apron, I am shamed to admit, has not been laundered for a year. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to wash an article that is literally caked with dried dough, flour etc. My concern is that putting it in the normal laundry, a front load machine, will cause clogging in the system.

Thanks,

John Ambrose

When I load up a towel or dish cloth with pieces of dough my wife bars me from the kitchen  -  usually only for day until she settles down.

I have found that soaking the towel/apron in cold water for a couple of days and agitating it several times each day to loosen the disolving bits of flour works pretty well.  I then rinse it by hand to remove most of the disolved particles and toss it immediately into the washer (with nothing else   -  just the "infected" piece) for a normal low water wash cycle.

 

quite a bit of fabric softener to the water, then see what happens after a day or so.

I even remove wallpaper paste with diluted fabric softener.

 

 

This stuff is a bear to clean up!  After a baking session, I've learned to never let my kitchen scrubby sponge come into contact with any wet dough.  I use paper towels for washing out my mixing bowl and cleaning up loose flour.  Anyway...I know this doesn't have to do w/ your apron--  I'm just amazed how destructive a little flour can be.  I think it gives fodder to the people who argue that eating flour is the same as eating paste :)

Try scraping or flaking off the dried dough first, then take it outside, hang it over a line and beat the krap out of it to get the rest of the flour...then just wash it on a very warm cycle.

Good luck!!

Thanks to all of you for your advice!

The solution, baking the apron, from dmsynder and rick.c worked well. After the apron cooled I laid it out on the table and scraped any remaining bits of dough using a butter knife.

Thanks again,

John Ambrose

Just remember to be careful that you aren't baking a polyester apron that will melt and if it is cotton, remember that being organic, it will deteriorate from baking. Good luck with it all!! I like the baking naked idea myself!!