by Tibor on Sun Oct 05, 2014 10:49 pm
dsgiese, I have never chopped my garbanzo beans. In the evening I bring the beans to a boil then simmer for a couple of minutes then cover and let sit till around 2or 3 pm the next day and then de hull . I like Gem spores the best (hard to get at times). Cultures for Health is good too and freezes real well. I had some trouble with Tempeh.info and don't suggest that. I drain the water from the pot and let the beans sit in the pot for a bit to start drying . I use 2 large kitchen towels. I use a large Pizza tray lay a towel down with half hanging over, dump the beans ,spread flat and fold the towel and pat . I use a sterile big spoon to stir it and pat some more, then pick up the whole towel and transfer onto the second dry towel and repeat. I use Pyrex baking pans with a perforated stiff aluminum tray that I cut and bent to fit snug and incubate at 88' (85-90 with my chicken thermostat) About 26 hours and I get wonderful Tempeh.
I have found that with a dryer, the beans (any bean) can get too dry if you are not careful and I had to fine tune my hole size in the perforated cover to get the results I want. I have a glass door on my home made incubator so I can watch each bread pan and monitor the moisture on the glass(which you want to see), and the fun part, when it starts to do it's thing and can tell when it's done. This way I don't have to open the incubator till almost the very end.
My favorite is toasted sesame Garbanzo tempeh and black eye pea Tempeh.
I'm not sure what you do different but I hope this helps.
Also , if you really want to get into Tempeh, GEM spore is the only spore that I have successfully sporulated and made my own spore.