There are many options for making fermented tea online now. Which recipe to take is up to you. I'll tell you how I make tea, without arguing about whether this is the best way or not. I leave this recipe for my friends who ask me how I ferment tea.

Collection.
The grass can be harvested all summer long. But the best time, in my opinion, is May-June. At this time, the leaf is juicy, tender. Until the grass has bloomed, there is still a lot of strength in the leaf itself. The leaf is not yet coarse, not damaged by snails and insects. In June, it is often cool, and the first half of the day, when the dew has already melted, and there are not too many mosquitoes - that's the thing to collect.

I tear off the sheet like this. I hold the upper part of the stem with one hand, but not by the very top either - otherwise you will cut it off. With one little finger of my other hand, I clasp the stem so that the thumb is pointing down. I carry it down like a combine to the lower withered leaves, and all the leaves are in my hand. With this method of collecting the leaf, the plant remains alive.
I collect a lot. Much because the leaf during fermentation shrinks significantly, and then also shrinks. For fermentation, we significantly deform the inner structure of the leaf so that the maximum amount of juice is released, without which fermentation will not work. Then, willow tea is still a herb, and not a shrub, like Ceylon tea. The leaf of the grass is two to three times thinner. Accordingly, tea is required three times more than Ceylon tea for the same volume of boiling water. But it is interesting that the exposure (exposure) when brewing tea takes much longer than Ceylon and Chinese teas.

Sorting.

After collecting, after you get home and open the bag with the leaf at home, you can notice that the bag is warm - the leaf has warmed up in it and you "hear" the delicate floral aroma of tea. It's not just the smell of green leaves. This is a complex aroma, in which delicate notes of flowers, dried fruits, strawberries are guessed. Wonderful aroma! This is the beginning of fermentation!
I lay out the sheet on the sheet,

and right there, taking a few leaves at a time, I slowly begin to sort the sheet and put a good sheet back into the bag. I examine the leaf, paying attention to the back of the leaf - there are often snails and insect larvae there. Of course, if someone loves tea with meat, you don't have to bother)

Light grimace.
I don’t leave the sorted and reassembled tea in a bag to dry, contrary to the advice of many. I consider dryness even harmful, because a lot of moisture is lost during drying, but we, on the contrary, need this moisture. (Of course, this rule will not work if you have harvested wet grass). Therefore, I take the zhmenka leaves from the package and slightly, trying not to damage much, roll the leaf into a loose lump.

At the same time, the leaf shrinks a bit, by itself it becomes sluggish. It will be easier for such a sheet to reach the condition where the sheet can be rolled for the main fermentation.

Primary cold fermentation.
I fold this slightly squeezed sheet into a bag. I squeeze the bag tightly, tie it, turn it upside down, put it in another bag. The whole thing can be squeezed even more by tying it with a rope. I leave the package in a cool place for a day or two. You can put the bag in the refrigerator. The main thing here is not to be hot, otherwise the leaf will spray, "burn".

Deep grimace
To prepare the sheet for curling, you need to achieve an evenly wet and sluggish sheet. To do this, press the leaf deeply at least once during the initial cold fermentation. If there is a lot of raw materials. then the raw materials are laid out in a bowl and kneaded like ordinary dough. It is important not to damage the sheet. Knead carefully, without fanaticism. If there is not much raw material, then you can repeat the procedure of light grimacing, but with stronger pressure, twisting a pinch of leaves into a ball.

Twisting.
The next day, or even every other day, when you untie the bag and look at the leaf, you will see that the leaf has become even more sluggish, darkened, became wet, juice came out.

The sheet should be something like this.

I take the leaves, ready to roll, and roll cigars / sausages from them, like plasticine. The main thing here is to handle the sheet gently; do not overdo it. It is important for us to select the juice, to make the leaf wet - to destroy the inner partitions of the leaf, while not destroying the leaf itself. It is important not to crumple it into a rag. In general, any herb retains its flavor better if it is damaged less. Wet and rolled into a sausage, the leaf does not disintegrate. It looks like this.

Ramming
Then I disassemble the resulting cigar and fold the sheet into a container. As the container fills, I tamp the leaves with my fist. I press hard. So the leaf is fermented better and more evenly.

Many recipes do things differently. The sheet, rolled into sausages, is folded in tight rows and left to ferment like this. I prefer to tamp the sheet evenly and tightly. But this is a matter of taste.

Basic cold fermentation.
I cover the dishes tightly with a bag / lid so that moisture does not come out, and put them in the refrigerator. My wife and I noticed that the most delicious tea is obtained after a slow cold fermentation. Fermentation in the cold can be up to a week. The longer the tea is fermented, the deeper the fermentation it reaches. The taste is, of course, different for teas with different fermentation depths. You can experiment with the depth of fermentation yourself, taking some of the raw materials for hot drying. The finished fermented leaf will have a dark green, sometimes almost brown color.

A half fermented tea looks like this.

Hot fermentation - hot drying.
Hot fermentation and hot drying are two different processes taking place at the same time. The oven heats up from 80 to 100 degrees, not higher, otherwise you will burn the sheet and ruin everything. And not lower, otherwise the sheet will not ferment hot.
We put the cold fermented sheet on a baking sheet in one layer, not thickly. We put it in the oven. Do not close the oven door completely. Leave a gap with a wine bottle cork. During hot fermentation, the leaf darkens. We make sure that the sheet dries evenly, from time to time we take out the baking sheet and turn it over, stir the sheet. It is important not to overdry the sheet. The sheet should break, but not crumble. There should be no burnt smell. On the contrary, a lot of flavor is released during baking. The smell in the apartment is amazing! It is difficult to describe in words this complex aroma, in which there are many tones, halftones and nuances, among which, it seems to me, blooming meadow grasses, the color of an apple tree, strawberries, and dried fruits predominate. Where does such a richness of aroma come from in a green leaf?

Ready tea.

Cold drying. Storage. Dry fermentation.
After hot drying, it is very important to finish drying the tea, to withstand the tea for two to three days. Ready tea is sprinkled on a sheet, or on paper and left to dry in this form. It is important to dry the finished tea, because when hot drying the pores are sealed, and moisture remains in the leaf. This is good, otherwise the leaf will not ferment in the oven and will not ferment during storage. From my own experience, I have repeatedly noticed that during storage, tea gains its taste and becomes more aromatic. This is dry fermentation. The longer the tea is stored, the tastier it will be. Exactly the same situation as with seasoned Chinese oolongs and pu-erhs.
The same residual moisture can be the reason for the appearance of mold, if this remaining excess moisture is not allowed to come out and the moisture content of the sheet is not equalized with the air humidity in the apartment. And moisture will come out slowly. Last year I rushed with it. I look, like dry tea, it even breaks. An hour later I put the tea in jars. A week or two has passed, moisture sealed in the sheet came out, mold has divorced. And if there is mold, you can immediately throw away the tea; the taste is then hopelessly spoiled. Reheating will not solve the problem.

How to make tea.
Earlier I mentioned that tea is required three times more than Ceylon and Chinese teas. Therefore, take generously and pour boiling water over it. The brewing time of tea is also required longer than for exposition of Ceylon and Chinese teas. Therefore, do not rush, let the tea open up. Ivan tea has a slight sedative effect, so it is better to drink it at night. In my opinion, this tea is self-sufficient. Additions of herbs - oregano, mint, currant, deprive tea of ​​individuality. Ivan tea goes well with honey.

Thickly brewed and well infused tea does not produce the strong brown tea color that black teas do. It looks more like green oolong tea. The taste of tea is enveloping, voluminous, with a slight sourness. Just like oolong tea, willow tea can be re-brewed with a large exposure. Cooled and even iced tea goes well with mint; this tea is great to drink in the heat.

There is a lot of Ivan-tea everywhere. He is an optimist. In the fires and felling sites, he is the first to proclaim the triumph of life with his bright colors. It grows a lot, it is generous. But handling him requires careful attitude, patience and effort. And it does not just open up, it takes time. Ivan tea is the embodiment of the Russian soul.

I would like to write about .... I wanted to say "hack", but it will not be correct. Regarding how and when we can shorten or, on the contrary, increase the stages of making sourdough bread, where we can simplify without prejudice, and which points should be left unchanged. Recipes for sourdoughs and sourdough bread on the net are dark, and some even directly contradict each other, nevertheless, all this is a real experience that people share and say: look, this is how it also turns out. However, not every experience is worth learning.

Why?

Why, when working with a test, do we do it this way and not another? Let me remind you that we "build" bread dough on sourdough in stages, and it is always a sourdough dough, and then kneading the dough, its subsequent fermentation, cutting, preliminary proving (when the pieces of dough are rounded and allowed to rest before molding) molding, final proofing , cuts if necessary, and steam baked goods. It may seem like too much fuss, but we want to bake delicious, beautiful bread, to achieve the best result, so I personally try not to miss anything that needs to be done with the dough. All this is called "technology", "method", but in fact there is a method that arose for a reason, but based on the physical and chemical properties of the components and their ability to influence each other: flour, water, yeast / starter culture, salt, sugar , oils and other additives.

Understanding the processes occurring with the test, understanding what is for what and what is happening at each stage, if necessary, you can simplify the work with minimal losses. Let's start in order.

1) Sourdough dough.

I usually put it on at night to start work in the morning, and I try to use it when it is not fully ripe, swollen, became lush, but at the same time it is not overripe or sour strongly (you can read about this method in the article about). What if you can't knead the dough right now? You can put the refrigerator in the dough and calmly transcend the test when you have the opportunity. It can stand in the refrigerator for several hours, depending on the temperature and degree of maturity, this will be enough for you to finish the job, finalize the work, feed and put the children to bed and, finally, do what you love))

2) Autolysis.

I got into the habit of kneading with autolysis, this is especially true for whole grain dough, which takes time for the bran-germ to swell in addition to protein and gluten begins to form. I mix the leaven, water and flour in a dough mixer, cover it so that the dough does not dry out, and leave it for 20 minutes. Note that white flour dough without the presence of sourdough can sit for 40 minutes, or even an hour, the sourdough dough needs much less time, because the lactic and other acids present in the sourdough contribute to the rapid swelling of the protein. Dough made of white flour, in general, can be kneaded without autolysis, but with whole grain it is better not to neglect it. But what if you do not have time to come to the test after 20 minutes of autolysis? If you stay for 10-15 minutes, that's okay, but if more, take a second and put the dough in the refrigerator. The low temperature will slow down the enzymes that break down the gluten, and you can start kneading when the opportunity arises. But if you think in advance that you will not be able to approach the dough at the right time, mixing it, add salt. It will somewhat slow down protein swelling, but it will also slow down enzymes. And in the refrigerator! And if you put the dough in the refrigerator, keep in mind that it will ferment slowly until it gets warm.

3) Kneading.

Here I don't even know what to say, if you knead with your hands, then you are just talking about machine and manual kneading. If you are too lazy to knead - knead in folds, with occasional short approaches to the dough, or in the process of active kneading, let the dough rest for 5 minutes to relax the gluten, this is a very good way. And here it is important to remember that it is better not to knead than to knead, maybe the bread will turn out to be not so lush, but tasty - for sure. By the way, you can read about overmixing and why the bread turns out to be tasteless because of it in this article.

4) Adding additives and oils.

You can toss seeds, raisins and nuts at the beginning of the knead, but then these additions will make it difficult for the dough to develop gluten, because they will tear it apart during kneading. Even bread makers are designed to add all kinds of additives towards the end of the batch, when the dough is already formed. Likewise with oil.

5) Fermentation and proofing.

With fermentation, in general, there are a lot of options. The sourdough dough is convenient because it wanders for a long time and, while it wanders, you can redo a bunch of things and even take a walk with children or go to the store. To speed up the process, you can put it in a warmer place and if you have proofing cabinet Brod & Taylor, this is very simple to do, there the temperature is set and stably maintained until you change it. If you want to increase the fermentation time, the refrigerator will help you, there the dough can stand for a long time, up to 8 hours, and grow slowly. Likewise with the final proofing. If you bake several loaves in turn, while one is baking, the second, so as not to stand, can be hidden in the refrigerator and so on until baking.

6) Pre-proofing.

You can skip this stage, but in order to form a workpiece with high quality, it is better to do it. What is it for at all? You divide the dough into chunks to bake two or more loaves, round, and give the dough a little rest. On the one hand, why not mold and put the dough in right away? Pre-proofing will allow you to form better quality. By rounding the pieces, you already give them the correct shape, and by allowing the gluten to relax on the matting, you get the opportunity to shape them tighter, while maintaining the internal structure of the dough and the bubbles in it. Bread formed in this way keeps its shape better in proofing and during baking and turns out to be more fluffy and rounded. Tense gluten during stretching can break, and the dough can resist (try to separate the dough and roll it out immediately after active kneading, it will resist and shrink), and if you let the gluten relax a little, you can create with it, which is good. Likewise and relatively, if you do not divide the dough, bake one loaf of them all.

7) The only thing you can't cheat with is baking and moisturizing.

The baking temperature must be high enough. If you initially choose a low oven or you do not heat up the oven enough, the workpiece will float and will not be very fluffy, if you overdo it, the bread will burn and the crumb will be too dry. It is the same with steam at the beginning of baking, if the moisture is too much and the moisture is too long (longer than 15 minutes), the cuts will not open and become equal to the crust, and the crust will turn out to be smooth and shiny.

Recently, I happened to visit a local bakery, where they recently started baking sourdough bread. Before I tell you how they do it, I will say that their bread is really tasty. So, bakers, in order to optimize production, skip the fermentation process before baking, knead the dough, immediately shape it and put it to proof.

On the one hand, how can you wander after kneading, fold it in an envelope, strengthen the gluten, dance with a tambourine? And so, production costs. On the one hand, it somehow turns out wrong, but there is a big difference in what professional bakers do, skipping fermentation, and we, amateurs-beginners. They know and understand what they are doing and why and they have excellent bread at the end, and practice, as you know, is the criterion of truth. But if we start to create whatever we want, we will never learn to bake good bread and work freely with different bread dough, because without knowing the basics, there will be no sense in such work.

Honestly, I immediately tried to repeat their experience and also skip the fermentation process, but in the end it turned out badly. I didn't wait for the bread to fit as it should (but at that moment it seemed to me that it went well)), baked it, it turned out, in general, tasty, but flat, and this “flat” applies to both the taste and appearance of the bread ... In addition, the dough behaved somewhat differently during molding, it was too pliable and inelastic.

In the next article, since I had the opportunity to shoot in a bakery, I will tell you how the professional production of bread works, what technique is used in the bakery and compare with what we can do at home. And, of course, I will tell you in more detail how local bakers got used to baking sourdough bread without fermenting it after kneading.

Ingredients (for products on 1 baking sheet, side 60 cm):

• 450 g of extra or premium wheat flour
• ¼ tsp tablespoons of dry instant (instant) yeast
• 20 g sugar
• 230 ml water
• ½ tsp salt
• 30 g odorless vegetable oil + a little oil to lubricate the dough container

for cooking you will need:

• bread maker with dough kneading mode (optional)
• 2 liter dough container with lid.

Preparation

If the kneading is carried out in a bread maker, then pour cold water into the bowl, add salt, sugar, stir. Pour in oil, add flour and add yeast last.

Set the dough kneading program and set the time to 20 minutes. Knead until the end of the program.

If kneading is carried out manually, dissolve sugar in lukewarm water, add yeast, stir, add butter, salt, flour and knead the dough for 20 minutes.
With any kind of kneading, the result should be a smooth elastic bun. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

Lubricate the container and lid for the dough with a little vegetable oil. Flatten the dough into a container. Place the dough in the container with the seam up, then turn the other side so that the whole dough is covered with a thin protective layer of butter. Cover the container with a lid and leave at room temperature for 1 hour.

Then put the yeast dough in the refrigerator for 8 hours. Such a dough can ferment in the refrigerator for a longer time, up to a day, but then sugar in the dough must be put 2 times more so that there is something to feed on the yeast.
Remove the container from the refrigerator after 8 hours. During this time, the dough should rise somewhere to the middle of the container.

Leave the dough to warm and rise at room temperature for 2 hours. Then you can bake the planned baked goods from the yeast dough with a variety of additives! After molding, the product should be allowed to stand for about 2 hours, no less.