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About Yeast Breads - Baking Tips Recipe

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Step #1 Information from the 1996 Old Farmer's Almanac, "What You Can Eat To Achieve True Peace of Mind", by Ken Haedrich The vanilla orchid is a member of the plant family known as Orchidaceae & is the only orchid that produces edible fruit.
Step #2 The beans grow on a thick vine that flourishes in warm, moist climates within 25 degrees of the equator.
Step #3 The vanilla plant begins to bear fruit when it is three or four years old.
Step #4 Eight to nine months after pollination, the beans are golden yellow & ready for harvest and curing.
Step #5 It takes about five to six lbs of green, freshly picked vanilla beans to make one lb of properly cured beans.
Step #6 There are basically two ways to cure the beans: in the sun or over a fire.
Step #7 Using the solar method, beans are spread in the hot sun by day & wrapped in blankets & placed in wooden boxes by night.
Step #8 The sweating process is repeated over & over for six months, until the beans have lost up to 80 percent of their moisture content.
Step #9 This method produces superior results & is used in Madascar, Tonga, Mexico, the former Bourbon Islands, & Tahiti.
Step #10 The wood-fire curing method, used in Indonesia & Bali, but produces a dry, brittle bean with a smoky flavor, takes only two or three weeks, generally considered inferior.
Step #11 When you buy a vanilla bean at your market, the black, oily, smooth pod you're buying is a cured bean.
Step #12 When you purchase a bottle of pure vanilla extract, you're buying beans whose flavor components have been dissolved in a solution of water & alcohol.
Step #13 By law, pure vanilla extract must contain at least 35 percent alcohol by volume.
Step #14 Anything less is labeled a flavor.
Step #15 Pure vanilla extracts come in a variety of folds, or strengths.
Step #16 The Food & Drug Administration has established that a fold of vanilla is the extractive matter of 13.
Step #17 35 oz of vanilla beans to a gallon of liquid.
Step #18 Strong, pure extracts, such as four-fold, are primarily used in mass food production.
Step #19 What about imitation vanilla? --- Not only is pure vanilla expensive, but demand also far exceeds the world's supply of the real thing.
Step #20 Stepping in to fill the void is the chemist, who has come up with a variety of imitations made from synthetic vanillin, the organic component that gives vanilla its distinctive flavor & fragrance.
Step #21 Most synthetic vanillin is a byproduct of the paper industry, made by cooking & treating wood-pulp effluent.
Step #22 But since vanillin is only one of more than 150 flavor & fragrance comlbs found in pure vanilla, the chemist has yet to match the subtlety with which Mother Nature has endowed the real thing.
Step #23 How to tell a good bean when you see one.
Step #24 --------------- Quality is key.
Step #25 To truly experience all the flavor & fragrance vanilla has to offer, you have to seek out quality beans and extracts.
Step #26 Generally speaking, look for beans that are supple and aromatic.
Step #27 Tahitian beans are moister & relatively short & plump, with thin skins & a floral aroma.
Step #28 Bourbon beans (so called because they originate in Madagascar, Reunion, & the Comoros, formerly known as the Bourbon Islands) are slightly dryer, contain more natural vanillin, & have thick skins (the flavor has nothing to do with bourbon whiskey.
Step #29 ) Stay away from dry, brittle, or smoky-smelling beans.
Step #30 Depending upon quality & variety, single vanilla beans retail from about $1.
Step #31 50 to $10 apiece.
Step #32 Vanilla beans should be kept at about room temp in an airtight container.
Step #33 Don't put in the fridge them or they may develop mold.
Step #34 Vanilla beans last up to two years.
Step #35 Especially if you cook with it often, or even the quart, it is more economical to buy pure vanilla extract by the pint, & share it with a friend.
Step #36 The best pure extracts contain no caramel and artificial color & little or no sugar.
Step #37 Store extract at room temperature, tightly closed.
Step #38 It will keep up to five years.
Step #39 --.
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