In Minecraft 26.3, three hay bales in a row on a crafting table make four straw beds, and three wool slabs of the same colour make one cushion. The Wilderness Bound drop also adds a full poplar wood set and stairs and slabs in all 16 colours of wool and concrete. Every recipe below is read from the Java Edition 26.3 game files, and Mojang's Bedrock 26.50 changelog gives the same straw bed and cushion recipes.
Straw bed: three hay bales, four beds
Put three hay bales side by side in one row of a crafting table to get four straw beds. A hay bale is nine wheat, so a batch of four costs 27 wheat. On Java, the recipe appears in your recipe book as soon as you pick up a hay bale.
A straw bed lets you sleep through the night without setting your spawn point: carry a few on long trips while your real bed keeps your spawn at home. Each one works once and is destroyed after use. It cannot be used in the Nether or the End, and is destroyed if you try. According to the Minecraft Wiki, straw beds stack to 16, and a night in one keeps phantoms away just as a normal bed does. On Bedrock, a hoe breaks them faster.
Cushion: three matching wool slabs
A cushion takes two steps at the crafting table. First, three wool blocks of one colour in a row make six wool slabs. Then three slabs of the same colour in a row make one cushion, so three wool blocks give two cushions. There are 16 colours, and one dye recolours one cushion: put both in the grid together.
Place a cushion on any flat surface and use it to sit down. It lines up with the block grid horizontally but sits on top of whatever supports it, breaks if that block is removed and cannot be moved by pistons. It has no collision, so it can overlap other objects, though not another cushion. The Minecraft Wiki adds that cushions also stack to 16 and, unlike wool, do not dampen vibrations.
Wool and concrete stairs and slabs
Both come in all 16 colours and use the familiar shapes at a crafting table:
- Slabs: three blocks in a row make six.
- Stairs: six blocks in a staircase (one in the top-left corner, two on the left of the middle row, a full bottom row) make four.
Wool stairs and slabs dampen vibrations like any wool block, and one dye recolours a wool stair or slab of any colour.
Concrete stairs and slabs can also be made in a stonecutter, where one concrete block gives one stair or two slabs. For stairs, that saves a third of the concrete; for slabs the yield is the same, but you cut exactly what you need. There is no stonecutter recipe for wool, and no dye recipe for concrete stairs or slabs.
The poplar wood set
Poplar logs come from poplar trees in the dappled forest, a new biome found near cold biomes; their saplings, also sold by the Wandering Trader, grow in a random leaf colour. One poplar log or wood block, stripped or not, gives four planks; four logs in a square make three poplar wood, and four stripped logs make three stripped poplar wood. The rest of the set uses the same shapes and yields as oak:
- Stairs: six planks in a staircase, for four.
- Slab: three planks in a row, for six.
- Fence: two rows of plank, stick, plank, for three.
- Fence gate: two rows of stick, plank, stick, for one.
- Door: six planks in two columns of three, for three.
- Trapdoor: six planks in two rows of three, for two.
- Pressure plate: two planks side by side, for one; button: one plank, for one.
- Sign: six planks above one stick, for three.
- Hanging sign: two iron chains above six stripped poplar logs, for six.
- Shelf: two rows of three stripped poplar logs with an empty row between, for six.
- Boat: five planks in a U shape, for one; add a chest for a Poplar Boat with Chest.
Poplar planks work in any recipe that takes planks, such as sticks and chests, and poplar logs smelt into charcoal.
Shelf mushrooms and stews
Shelf mushrooms grow on poplar trees and fallen poplars; bone meal turns a small one into a large one, which drops two when broken, and the Wandering Trader sells them. They cannot be crafted, but count as mushrooms in food recipes:
- Mushroom stew: a bowl and any two mushrooms, brown, red or shelf, in any mix.
- Suspicious stew: a bowl, any two mushrooms and one of the 17 flowers the recipe accepts.
- Rabbit stew: a new version takes a shelf mushroom with a baked potato, cooked rabbit, a carrot and a bowl.
Found, not crafted
Poplar saplings and leaves, red shrubs and the new explorer maps have no crafting recipe. Explorer maps such as the Dappled Forest Abandoned Camp Map come from chests in abandoned camps. They can no longer be zoomed out, but you can still copy one at a crafting table with Empty Maps, and each copy keeps its type. According to Mojang's Bedrock changelog, abandoned camps also hold ready-made straw beds and cushions.
On Bedrock, every straw bed and cushion you place until October 1 at 10 a.m. PT counts toward the Camp Out community challenge, explained in our Minecraft Live recap. The rest of the drop is in our Minecraft 26.3 guide, and every colour and variant has its own page in our crafting recipes.
