Ani's Raw Food Essentials (7 page)

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RAW BASICS AND TECHNIQUES

Dehydrating, Soaking and Sprouting, Fermentation and Pickling, and Substitutions

 

The essential information in this chapter will have you quickly on your way toward dehydrating, to make delicious flatbreads to use in the same way as you woould any toast. I'll show you how easy it is to soak and sprout nuts and seeds, too.

 

I'll help you start making your own fermented vegetables, using cucumbers to make pickles that will help add probiotic goodness to your diet, so you can absorb more nutrients from the food you eat. I'll also explain how to make substitutions of your favorite ingredients.

Later, in chapter 3, I'll be showing you how to make cultured drinks such as kombucha and kefir. Drinking probiotics works wonders for your digestion and is the easiest way to get more healthy bacteria into your body.

In hot, dry climates such as a desert, food can be laid out under the sun to dry. For the rest of us who don't live in a desert, a dehydrator allows us the flexibility to dry
all year round, with the ability to control the temperature and length of drying time. Dehydrators act as the sun does to dry and preserve foods such as sun-dried tomatoes, raisins, fruit leathers, and jerkies.

A dehydrator is an enclosed container, such as a box, which has a heating element to warm at low temperatures whatever has been placed inside. A fan blows this warm air across the surface of food, which has been placed or spread on lined mesh trays to dry.

Although dehydrating isn't necessary to the raw diet, it will help you create a unique baked or fried texture. You can make crackers, breads, pizza crusts, chips, fried onions, scones and biscuits, pancakes, and even bacon. In this chapter, I'll show you how to make three easy flatbreads with a texture similar to a cracker. They can be used like toast to make sandwiches, as croutons crumbled onto your salad and soup, and as a pizza crust topped with sauce and cheeze.

Don't have a dehydrator? Don't worry—I'll offer tips on transitioning and easy ways to learn about dehydrating before you invest in your own machine. You can familiarize yourself with these essentials and then move on to the recipes, or you can go straight to the rest of the recipes. All of these basics are cross-referenced throughout the book. I hope you enjoy these essentials from my kitchen.

I use an Excalibur Dehydrator. I've tried many dehydrators over my lifetime, and keep coming back to the Excalibur. I have a nine-tray model in my home, just for myself. You can choose from as few as four trays, to as many as nine. I like having nine trays because I like to make large batches of crackers, pizza crusts, and cookies, especially during the holiday season. Nine trays give me space to make a couple of trays of cookies, a few trays of breads and crackers, a few trays of wrappers, and a couple of trays of Buckwheat Crispies, all at the same time.

I've been using my nine-tray Excalibur Dehydrator at home and in my commercial kitchens for over a decade, and they've made food for thousands of people. I love Excalibur's large, 14-inch-square mesh trays. Unlike other dehydrators that have an air channel and hole in the center of each tray, Excalibur's solid trays allow me to dry large pieces of bread, wrappers, and big round pizza crusts.

Excalibur offers reusable Paraflexx nonstick sheets that fit perfectly over each tray. These liners support my eco-green lifestyle because I don't have to waste parchment paper.

I recommend choosing a dehydrator with a timer, for convenience. The timer control is built right into the box frame and makes it easy to set your drying time, to prevent over- or underdrying. Each model also has a temperature-control dial, not simply an on-off switch.

For more information on the Excalibur Dehydrator, visit
www.excaliburdehydrator.com
.

Dehydration is our raw equivalent of baking in the cooked world. As with cooking, you don't want to overbake your food, or it will become too dry. For best results, you need to consider your climate and the outside temperature and humidity, when you use a dehydrator. Here are a few tips:

How quickly you plan to eat your treats will determine how long you should dry them. The longer you dehydrate your food, the drier and crisper it gets, and the longer its shelf life. But when I make dehydrated snacks such as a pizza crust or corn tortillas that I know will disappear in a day or two, I choose to leave them a bit less dehydrated, so they will be a little softer. This saves electricity, too. The only items you'll definitely want to dry all the way are the crispy chips, or any fresh herbs that you wish to preserve (underdehydrating them could contribute to their growing
moldy when stored). If you do accidentally overdehydrate your food, you can rehydrate it by spritzing it with water with a spray bottle.

If I'm going to dehydrate, I make sure to fill as many dehydrator trays as I can. However, note that the more your dehydrator is filled, the longer it will take to dry, because more total moisture needs to be extracted and evaporated.

The temperature and moisture around your dehydrator will effect the drying time. Drying times will be briefer in hot, dry climates and will be longer in cold damp climates.

In general, to make a cracker or crust, you want to spread 2 to 3 cups of batter per 14-inch-square Excalibur Dehydrator tray.