[Sca-cooks] raised crusts

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Stefan:
>Bear, talking about hot water doughs, said:
>>  When I've made this type of dough, it is usually with water which has been
>>  brought to a boil and removed from the stove to let the temperature drop to
>>  around 140-160 degrees F.  I suspect the heat of the water partially
>>  coagulates the gluten and reduces bread-like texture.
>
>Is there a particular reason to bring the water to boiling and then
>let it cool down? Why not just heat it until it reaches 140-160
>degrees F.?

Bear already responded to this, but maybe I can add something.
There's a an English sorta-proverb/rule-of-thumb connected with
making tea, which says, essentially, "never bring the kettle to the
pot, always bring the pot to the kettle." The kettle being the
utensil for boiling the water, the pot being what you infuse your tea
in. The object of the game is to have the water as hot as possible,
so you don't take the kettle off the flame and carry it to where the
pot is (across the room, perhaps?), because the water is noticeably
cooler when you do it that way. Rather, you bring the pot containing
the tea to where the kettle is, again, because the kettle cools off
quickly.

As Bear states, when the water is boiling, it cools off quickly once
you take it off the flame, starting at the boiling point of 212
degrees Fahrenheit, getting down to 140-160 pretty quickly. If you
heat the water to 140, it could conceivably be down to 120 by the
time you can pour it in with your flour, and this is not hot enough
to "cook" the proteins, which is what you need to do for the desired
effect.

BTW, just as a reference point, 140 degrees is about what most people
are thinking of when they think of water that is really hot, but not
hot enough to burn. Give or take a degree or five, 140 is the
approximate temperature at which a lot of proteins begin to
coagulate, so this is the point at which your body begins to
recognize damage, sense pain, etc.

Adamantius