Wholemeal Crank

I've recently discovered that some of the higher quality teas I've been buying really can be reused for several cups of tea. This is working beautifully with oolongs, chinese green teas, and pu-erhs. Some questions that have come up, and my apologies in advance if this is discussed elsewhere, but I can't figure out how to search for this topic without getting huge numbers of irrelevant hits: Why does the resteeping not draw as much bitterness out of the leaves as does a longer primary steeping? How long do the leaves need to rest, if at all, between steepings? And a related but more general question: when served tea in a gaiwan, the handleless cup with shallow saucer and lid, how do you prevent oversteeping and bitterness and at the same time avoid a burnt tongue from drinking the tea too quickly?

Tried a batch today for the first time in a while, and this time I tried a smaller pot. I'd been looking for a heavy pot between 3 and 4 quarts, because my 5 quart dutch oven makes a very spread out loaf. I bought a cute corning ceramic pot of about 2 quarts to see what that would do, and it was definitely too small. Their is a dent in the top of the loaf corresponding to the bottom of the lid. Oops. Still haven't encountered a clay pot or sandy pot that looked right, but now I have a better idea of what is too small.

Got the book, read the book, sourdough starter coming along well again, first bread made without the sourdough, and it is quite nice. His "breakthrough" in this book is finding ways to improve the flavor and rising qualities of whole wheat breads. He is combining techniques to yield the flavor qualities of prolonger fermentation and autolyse on breads made with commercial yeast by making a separate yeast-less soaker dough and a yeasted biga or sourdough which are combined after 24 hrs to give the final dough to shape and bake. He also has continued to work witht he mash technique which was one of the test recipes that was splendidly successful re flavor though quite messy to work with. My first attempt with a yeasted biga plus soaker collapsed in proof (due to crazy work hours) but still tasted great. I can see I will have to work a bit to adapt it to my schedule--maybe taking it to work so I can warm it up several hours in a advance of coming home to shape/proof/bake. Full of great info, appealing recipes, and clearly a keeper.

Interesting to see more comments about the pots used for this and the quantity of dough. I am not surprised to see that just increasing the dough volume does not work to give the desired shape to a larger pot. This is a fragile dough with passively rather than actively developed gluten, and it makes sense that there may be a limit to how large a loaf can be created before it collapses under its own weight. I have a 5 qt pot and found my loaves were lower than I wanted too. My preferred solution would be to find a smaller pot, but cast iron pots in the 3-4 quart size range that are not enameled (so not subject to the color changes, chips or cracks) are hard to find. Maybe the solution is to reduce the dough volume and use the smaller plain cast iron pots that are more readily available, like this 2 qt pot from lodge: http://tinyurl.com/23ueb2 Or try the chinese clay pot from a few posts back.

I was quite interested in your post, as well as another mention of good results with a 3 1/2 quart enameled cast iron pot. I have been disappointed in the size of the loaf coming out of my 5 qt dutch oven, and I've been pondering smaller options to get a higher loaf, but lodge offers a 2 1/2 qt model that seems a bit small, and several variations on 4 qt that look like shorter versions of my dutch oven--not the smaller diameter I need. It's easy to get stainless pots in a variety of sizes, but I figure the thermal mass is critical here, and want to avoid the enamel pots where I end up paying lot$ for the enamel coating that I don't particularly want for this particular application. Should be easy to find a nicely sized clay pot now that I'm reassured it can take the heat!

As one of the recipe testers for the new book, I got an e-mail from Peter on Monday saying he has several boxes of them and we could order copies directly from him. So I am waiting.....first my check has to get to him.....then my book has to get to me.......(tapping feet). I was so excited that I ordered two, one for me and one for his number two fan, my father. But today Dad called me up to tell me all about how marvelous the book is, and how he has spent three days just studying the introductory chapters, and I am having a hard time not driving straight out to every bookstore in town to get it RIGHT NOW! As it is, he will have to give away his present copy when his signed copy arrives in the mail. And I am going to go make some unyeasted bulgur bread while I wait for mine.

I'll see if I can find that. Thanks for the tip!

I have used standard sweet basil from the farmer's market, and also used some basil with a purple stem from a thai grocery, but this stuff requires a ton of basil, so I look for what's available in bulk at a reasonable price. As for the hooch, I would not add it because I do not like it, but for those who do, it would probably be terrific. And today I confirmed Katie's point that the juice, added to the herb syrup, does not keep so well. Today I diluted some of the juice/syrup concentrate from last night and had it with lunch, and the basil and mint flavors were notably flat. It still was nice limeade, but nothing like last night. I will try to do better by the next batch!

That worked beautifully. I took a lot of basil--about 5 ounces--and rinsed it; chopped it coarsely; and added it to freshly prepared simple syrup (1C sugar's worth) as soon as it was out of the microwave; let it blanch/steep until the syrup was lukewarm, then pureed all in the blender, very carefully, but still had a fair bit of cleanup to do!. Then overnight in the fridge, strained and pressed the liquid out of the shredded basil, and added lime juice to that to give a tart concoction, and diluted about 1:4 with sparkling water. The added step of pureeing after the first steeping seems to have done it. Tomorrow I will see how well the syrup/lime mix keeps, since I do not have any guests to help finish it off tonight. Thanks!

Forgot that step this time. Next batch!

This is the closest version yet, but I'd like a little stronger basil finish. Used about 1 C minced basil to a 1:1 simple syrup with 1/2 C ea sugar and water, steeped overnight, drained & strained the leaves, diluted the basil syrup with juice of 3 medium limes, and then diluted 1/2 of that with about 12 oz of sparkling water. Would a stronger sugar solution draw more flavor out of the same amount of basil leaves, enough to make up for the extra lime juice I'd need to dilute it with?

Ok, will try that and report back.

Will do, thanks!

I had an amazing drink at Gingergrass, a Vietnamese restaurant near my home in Los Angeles, and have been trying to reproduce it since. I hope this is the right forum--it is a non-alcoholic beverage, but I don't see a forum for that. The drink was called "Basil-lime elixir" or something like that, and it was a limeade with an amazing hit of basil and a touch of mint as well. It was a lightly cloudy green, made with sparkling water, and just sweet enough to not be sour but not taste sweet. I have tried: pureeing a generous handful of basil and a sprig of mint with lime juice and a bit of water, straining the result, diluting with sparkling water and adding sugar to taste. The result tasted a bit, well, leafy. The basil flavor came through ok, but it was muddier than the version at the restaurant. bruising a handful of basil leaves and a bit of mint and steeping them in lime juice diluted just enough to cover, then straining and adding the sugar and sparkling water. This did not taste strongly enough of basil. making a tea with hot water and basil, just enough water to cover the basil, and the result had very little flavor so I stopped there. chopping the basil fine in the cuisinart, and steeping that in sugar and lime juice, then diluting with the sparkling water. This also didn't taste strongly of basil. Is there a better way to extract the maximum flavor from the fresh basil, and not get the "leafy" taste of the pureed version? Would a champion juicer do a better job? Is there a potent commercial basil extract available to the restaurant cook?

Thanks both of you for the reply. This sounds exactly in line with my thinking--I have spent enough time in a lab working with bacterial and yeast cultures and know the lengths to which we went to keep our cultures sterile. I'd really like to find a study where someone analyzed starters in various stages of adaptation, and showed what was going on--taking something like your experience with the starter beginning like SF sourdough and ending up more like your "native" starter, taking samples at the beginning, after one week, two weeks, three weeks, and one month of regular feedings, and comparing those to your own home starter. It wouldn't be a terribly difficult study today--an advanced student could do it for a high school science fair project.

I have read in different sources that distinct sourdough starters revert to local varieties of lactobacilli and yeast when they are cultured in a a new location for a while, so that a san francisco sourdough starter brought to new york would become more like a native new york starter after some weeks or months of use, and less like a san francisco starter. And the opposite theory, that distinct starters remain distinct once they're well established and stable, is also held to be true in various sources. Can anyone here point me to a good reference on this question? And sorry if I'm duplicating a question asked and answered many times already--I tried the search but can't figure out how to make it specific enough to avoid hundreds of posts that refer to sourdough starters in general.

I have been worried about the effect of the long fermentation at room temp on rich ingredients like eggs--would they develop off or unpleasant tastes? I've never used dairy in long fements unless most of the time was refrigerated. I'd presume that the baking would take care of any salmonella they might grow....

I did a batch in a heavy stainless stockpot, and it worked ok, but the 8-quart pot I used was a little too big, and the loaf spread out a lot. I'd be careful with the ones that have aluminum layers in the base--wouldn't crank the oven up to 500 with one of those inside.

Extra yeast will just decrease the rising time, but your cooler apartment will increase the rising time, so between the two, it may be a wash. I'd look carefully for the bubbles and check the video for a reminder of what the ready-for-shaping dough should look like. I made my last batch with twice the yeast, but with a long refrigeration step to retard, and the result was quite tasty, although it probably needed more than 31/2 hours to proof after being shaped straight from the fridge. It's flexible enough to accomodate all of your changes.

I just tried the bran he recommended originally for the first time, and was impressed by how well it worked. And bran did fly about as I upended the towel into the hot pot, but was easy to clean up--not a starchy or glutinous mess like the semolina or cornmeal has been. And I'm using 100% whole wheat flour, and my loaves have plenty of flavor. I think the flavor is almost as good as I get with sourdough, except that there is no sour component--good deep wheat flavor, but not tart--and the overall preparation fits much better into my schedule than a sourdough. I'll put up with some flying wheat bran for that.

My first loaf with the bran--I'd been using semolina--was a lot easier to clean up after than the ones using semolina--the bran doesn't soak through and turn to glue like the semonlina, and forms a nice barrier between bread and towel that holds even when damp. No muss, no fuss. And still a nice crust. Even a pretty crumb. <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/137/341264316_15e57583a2.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Inside (bread)" /></a> And I'm getting plenty of flavor with 100% white whole wheat flour in a 20-22 hour rise.

You may end up with a heavy but tasty loaf that you'll end up finishing yourself rather than sharing proudly. Not a major problem.

It will probably be somewhat denser, but still mighty tasty.

We used to get a sack each of pecans and walnuts from my grandfather's orchard each year, and IIRC they seemed to keep pretty well in the shells, months at least before they would all be shelled and frozen, but in recent years I've had more problems with walnuts bought in shell and already gone off than pecans--even when buying this years' nuts in the fall.

That does seem like the obvious answer, but I can remember more problems with nuts purchased raw from the supermarket than those that were already toasted. Maybe the toasting just hides the incipient rancidity.