Wholemeal Crank

Agony of the leaves sounds so evil! And unfortunately for my budget, I've discovered several places that have lovely teas online and in person. Very dangerous. But much to my unexpected pleasure, I found that a tin of Ti Kuan Yin I bought fairly inexpensively some months ago held up very well next to the more expensive stuff I found online. But I've never rinsed it; I would need an extra container just to hold the rinse water when I make tea at work.

I think I get it now--following that link and googling a bit for chahai--the gaiwan is either used for brewing the tea for just a few seconds, then drunk quickly (hard to see how I would accomplish that without burning my tongue), then repeated, or for tea steeped in the other container then poured into it. So if someone serves loose leaf tea in a gaiwan, you're to add the hot water, and toss it off quick before it gets bitter?

Anyone know of a true pressure canner that is compatible with an induction stovetop? A discussion in another forum is making the induction seem quite attractive, but I have never seen a genuine pressure canner in anything but aluminum, I presume due to weight/cost issues. I see fagor makes a 10qt pressure cooker that they like to advertise as a "canner", but anything under 20 quarts is can't do a batch of stock at once. I can imagine replacing my saucepans and stockpots without too much regret if they don't work, but simply cannot do without my canner.

I'd be worried that increasing it that much might go beyond what the structure of the dough can support without standard kneading and shaping. That's why I searched out a smaller container rather than increase the size of the loaf.

Just made this in a 2 quart chinese-style sandy pot, and it was the best yet--still a trace gummy inside, but super crust, and the size of the pot was just right for the quantity of dough. I plugged the tiny hole in the lid of the sandy pot with a bit of foil, and only had a little problem with a bit of sticking that tore the crust--very odd. <a href=" title="Sandy pot for Sullivan St bread by debunix, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2347/2101980519_5dc417ccab.jpg" width="500" height="299" alt="Sandy pot for Sullivan St bread" /></a> <a href=" title="Baked by debunix, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2366/2101862719_0e4a1f6b9b.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Baked" /></a> <a href=" title="Out of hte pan by debunix, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2144/2101862695_b918e31940.jpg" width="500" height="308" alt="Out of hte pan" /></a> a few more details here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/sets/...5092392/detail/

Answered my own question: discovered that Santa Monica has a lovely co-op market, "Co-oportunity", where I not only got my tea-makings, but also ordered more wheat berries for the mill. Good place. Just wish it was on my side of town so I could shop there all the time....

As the Whole Foods juggernaut grows, it has become much harder to find bulk herbs and spices--they've eliminated the bulk sections for these entirely. And not having been in LA very long, I don't know which local natural food stores still sell a good variety of these in bulk. I know I can get most of my spices at Penzeys, but they don't carry the stuff I want to make my own herbal tea mixes--things like chamomile and raspberry leaf and rosehips. Any suggestions for where to look?

So later steepings longer? Quite interesting. I've been stretching them a little too.

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....