The chile is the fruit of a plant in the genus capsicum, cultivars of capsicum annuum, a South American plant that travelled to Mexico before the common era. The plant grew in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America and was introduced to Europe and Asia in the 16th century in the Columbian “exchange”. It is used in cuisine that is considered, in modern terms, to be traditional or indigenous to those areas.
Fresh and dried capsicum cultivars were used in the indigenous cooking of Mexico and Central America for centuries before the Spanish conquest. Mexican cooking uses chiles in moles and other sauces, chiles rellenos (chiles stuffed with a filling and cooked), and other dishes.
Most cultivars produce the alkaloidcapsaicin. Most capsicums, including jalapenos, serranos, cayennes and Thai (Bird’s Eye) peppers are “hot”; new spicier cultivars have been developed. Capsaicin is an irritant which makes some peppers “red hot”. Capsaicin is not found in the seeds; little is found in the flesh of the capsicum fruit. It is in the white pith of the seed pod and the ribs of the fruit. The 1912 Scoville scale, based on detection of the diluted substance by tasters, is still used to assess the concentration of capsaicin although chemical analysis has superceded the 1912 method.
Many sources write chile for the capsicum fruit, and chili for stews made with chile. The English speaking inhabitants of South Asia (India) and Southeast Asia spelled the name as chillies. That spelling is still used.
Sweet or bell peppers are chiles. The bell pepper cultivar was developed in Europe early in 20th century and is widely grown and sold. The gene for production of capsaicin is recessive – bell peppers are not “hot” or spicy. Banana peppers and pimentos are mild too. Mild chiles add a sweet fruity flavour.
In pre-industrial practice, chiles could be used fresh, or dried. In the 18th and 19th centuries, processsors established methods of grinding dried chiles and storing and using chile powders and sauces made from dried chiles or chile powder. Ground spice powders made food safer and food preparation in kitchens more efficient. Powders of ground single cultivar chiles – e.g. ancho (dried ripe poblano) are available in some markets in the 21st century. In Mexican traditional cooking, a cook needed a supply of fresh or dried chiles, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and Mexican oregano (as opposed to the Mediterranean Origanum vulgare).
Black, green and white peppercorns are the fruit of the Asian piper negrum. The East Asian Sichuan pepper is neither capsicum or piper.
Allergies to bell peppers and other capsicum chiles are common, yet not well known or understood by the public. Many websites offer or share advice based on theories, some of which are or appear medical. The medical foundation of such theories is that allergies are immune responses to toxic glyco-alkaloids, or other alkaloids or proteins that may contact the skin or internal organs of humans. The theories blame substances in capsicum plants or in related plants in the nightshade family.
Con Carne
Chile con carne is a popular American stew:
Chili con carne (also spelled chilli con carne or chile con carne and shortened to chili or chilli; … meaning “chili with meat”, is a spicy stew containing chili peppers (sometimes in the form of chili powder), meat (usually beef), tomatoes and optionally kidney beans. Other seasonings may include garlic, onions, and cumin. The dish originated in northern Mexico or southern Texas.
Amercan Chili is based on meat. Pork and beef are traditional choices. The meat can be ground or cut to bit sized stewing pieces. There are recipes with other meats. It is customary to brown the meat to flavour the dish. Some make chili without beans. Many use beans. The beans used in chili (pinto, black turtle, red kidney, cranberry) are the dry seeds of cultivars or varietals of the central American wild bean, phaseolus vulgaris. The beans dry naturally and are harvested as a dry grain. The dry beans are hard and have to be cooked until they are tender and “creamy”. Dry beans can vary by age and other factors, making cooking times a matter of judgment or luck. Beans can be booked in boiling water or simmered in water near the boiling point. The slow cooker was developed to simmer beans, but is losing popularity.
Meat cooked in a chile sauce – carne con chile – is/was a north Mexican dish. Rick Bayless has established restaurants offering Mexican cooking, as an advance on American regional cooking, including “Tex-Mex” Western and Southwestern cooking. Bayless provided a recipe for carne con chile colorado from the state of Chihuahua in his first book, Authentic Mexican (1987). He has chile con carne on the menu in Frontera, a restraurant chain, and has published a version of the Frontera Uptown Texas Chili. By mentioning the question about whether chili con carne was invented in Texas and ny publishing the following comment he suggested that chili con carne is not an authentic Mexican dish.
Chile con carne: detestable food that under the false Mexican title is sold in the United States from Texas to New York
Rick Bayless, in Authentic Mexican (1987), quoting and translating Diccionario de Mejicanismos
Carne con chile was adopted by non Hispanic/indigenous consumers in the southwest US as American settlers migrated into the land annexed by the US from Mexico in the wars of annexation in the 1840s. It can be prepared and presented in thousands of way. It is often served with cornbread, a baked “cake” associated with the Southern states of the US. A “Tamale pie” is chili with a cornbread topping, baked in an oven.
In the early 20th century, food scientists at the New Mexico State University recovered “heritage” peppers from indigenous peoples and started the lines of New Mexico cultivars of capsicum annuum for agricultural use.
Proprietary chili powder spice blends and sauces became popular in the late 19th century. A few brand names endured; the idea of a blended powder became dominant in the American market. The chile in chili con carne is usually a blend of powdered dried chile with other dried ground spices including cumin, oregano (often not Mexican oregano), garlic powder, onion powder and coriander In modern (late 20th and 21st century) chili competitions, cooks may use multiple branded chili powders and sauces to get a unique and pleasing effect.
The origins and authenticity of chile con carne are, on the internet, a vast cavern. There are many web pages and videos of methods, recipes, festivals and competitions. In modern times it is a stew of meat and other ingredients in a tomato sauce flavour by onion, aromatics and spices including chile.
For several years I made stews, including chili, in a slow cooker with a ceramic insert (a crockpot). I used the methods suggested by cookbooks including the America’s Test Kitchen book Slow Cooker Revolution (2011). The ATK approach was to use canned beans, drained of the can fluid, which is not appealing and assumed to be unpalatable, Considering the use of salt in canning, salty broth is normally a health concern. I have been using an Instant Pot to prepare or cook beans for the last few years, and have given up using a crockpot.
Bread is made by mixing flour and water into a dough, introducing a rising agent (historically, yeast), kneading the dough, and baking the dough:
Bread is a combination of flour and water that has been baked. Over the years, its production has become increasingly more complex. Bread is a staple food in many countries, with cultural significance. With common sayings such as “the bread winner,” it has become one of the most important parts of the world’s diet.
Flour is the product of grinding and milling cereal (grain). The point of harvesting and milling grain is to preserve the starches, to be eaten and metabolized into glucose. When flour is mixed with water, starches dissolve. The starches are rearrranged by mixing flour with water, kneading dough and baking bread.
Grain and flour are NOVA class 1 unprocessed or mininally processed foods.
Unpackaged bread is a NOVA class 3 processed food, if
Processes include various preservation or cooking methods, and, in the case of breads and cheese, non-alcoholic fermentation. Most processed foods have two or three ingredients, and are recognizable as modified versions of Group 1 foods. They are edible by themselves or, more usually, in combination with other foods. The purpose of processing here is to increase the durability of Group 1 foods, or to modify or enhance their sensory qualities.
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Packaged industrially baked bread is considered to be a NOVA class 4 ultraprocessed food due to the additives and the processing of ingredients:
Additives in ultra-processed foods include some also used in processed foods, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilizers. Classes of additives found only in ultra-processed products include those used to imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of foods or to disguise unpalatable aspects of the final product. These additives include dyes and other colours, colour stabilizers; flavours, flavour enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners; and processing aids such as carbonating, firming, bulking and anti-bulking, de-foaming, anti-caking and glazing agents, emulsifiers, sequestrants and humectants.
A multitude of sequences of processes is used to combine the usually many ingredients and to create the final product (hence ‘ultra-processed’). The processes include several with no domestic equivalents, such as hydrogenation and hydrolysation, extrusion and moulding, and pre-processing for frying.
The overall purpose of ultra-processing is to create branded, convenient (durable, ready to consume), attractive (hyper-palatable) and highly profitable (low-cost ingredients) food products designed to displace all other food groups. Ultra-processed food products are usually packaged attractively and marketed intensively.
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Resources
Basic Technique and Science
Most people purchase bread made by industrial bakers from grocery stores. Some shop at bakeries.
Many people have kitchens and oven and could bake bread if they purchased flour and other ingredients and had time, and knowledge of technique and science. It isn’t rocket science but it is a specialized activity. Bread baking may have been a part of the education of students in home economics courses. Persons who work in bakeries may have taken courses in vocational educational institutions or learned from experienced bakers in work experience.
Publishers have published some texts and educational aids and many recipe books, but few books that can assist a beginner with basic technique. A useful book, in the Amazon Kindle store: Bread Science, by Emily Jane Buehler, published by Ms. Buehler, as Two Blue Books in 2006 and as a Kindle e-book in 2014, republished in 2021 in a 2nd edition. Ms. Buehler worked in a coop bakery, and taught community courses before she wrote this book. She researched the science of grain, milling, dough and baking in the professional journal collections of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She presents the science of gluten and fermentation, the practical technique of handling dough, an explanation of bakers’ percentage, and a discussion of the techniques of making and using preferments – sponges and starters.
Web
YouTube has videos that demonstrate technique and what dough looks like as it is worked. Finding them is not easy, as search tools drive users to sift through many search returns.
Lesaffre’s Red Star brand has some useful videos on its channel:
Whole wheat and bread flour weigh the same amount per unit of volume. Whole wheat flour, pastry flour and American all-purpose flour have proteins to make gluten but not quite enough. Bread flour milled to US and European standards (and Canadian All-Purpose) at 12.5% has more of the proteins that bond to form gluten. Gliadin and glutenin are insoluble proteins in grain and in flour. The proteins are found in wheat flour, and also can be extracted by milling, processed as vital wheat gluten (“VWG”) powder, and mixed into bread dough:
Consisting of mainly gliadin and glutenin, wheat gluten is unique among cereal proteins based on its ability to form a cohesive and viscoelastic mass. This rheological property makes it a dynamic material that is able to grow and keep the gasses within the dough during extended fermentation periods. The viscoelastic nature also provides the oven spring (increase in height due to the expansion of gasses) that we see in the oven.
….
The addition of VWG generally increases the dough mixing time and fermentation time. As more protein solids are added, more water is needed for complete flour hydration.
Due to its cohesive and viscoelastic properties, its main function is a dough strengthener. It is also a film former, binder, texturizer, fat emulsifying agent, processing aid, stabilizer, water absorption and retention agent, thermosetting agent, and a flavor and color binder.
Vital gluten can absorb almost twice its weight in water (140–180% water). The quality of dry vital gluten is estimated with the Brabender farinograph or Chopin Alveograph. The breadmaking quality of VWG is also assessed through standardized baking tests.
When water is added to flour, these proteins bond into strands and sheets of gluten “a composite of storage proteins … found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, related species and hybrids … “. Gluten gives elasticity to dough, helping it keep its shape and often gives the final product a chewy texture. Gluten relaxes in time which lets the dough flow and rise.
Gluten forms when water is added to wheat flour. Bakers knead dough, stretching and folding it on itself, repeating the motion for several minutes. This structures the gluten. A baker can pause after mixing or start kneading, or pause during kneading. Kneading structures or pulls the gluten into a network of micro balloons. The dough should be viscous (tenacious and elastic) to hold together, but extensible to stretch, and to flow. A professional baker will probably use a mechanical mixer; many home bakers may have one. A mechanical mixer or stand mixer uses mixing arms, a paddle or a spiral dough hook in a circular or elleptical motion. A mixer has a range of speeds. The baker uses a slow speed to mix the ingredients and a higher speed to knead.
Rising Agents
A rising agent (leavening) creates bubbles in the dough that create the bubbled texture of the “crumb” inside the crust of the baked loaf. Until chemical leavening agents were developed, bread was leavened by adding baker’s yeast. Yeast consumes some of the starches – it ferments, creating gas, which is trapped in gluten in the dough, which makes the bread rise, after the dough has been kneaded. Bakerpedia explains, condensing a number of complex biochemical processes:
When yeasted dough ferments rises and increases in volume, and flavor is developed. Yeast converts starch in flour into sugar, carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol. CO2 gas is trapped by gluten proteins in the flour which causes dough to rise. Fermentation results in a light and airy crumb.
The yeast propogates. Propogation and fermentation accelerate until the yeast cells run out of starch, or are killed off by high temperature. The dough rises in 2 or 3 stages: bulk fermentation, and intermediate and final proof. Dough is knocked or punched down to release gas at the end of the bulk fermentation, and folded when the loaf is shaped. The dough rises again in the baking pan and springs when yeast warms up after the pan goes in the hot oven, before the heat warms the dough and kills the yeast.
Commercial bakers use chemical leaveners for some bread. Home bakers use baking powder and baking soda for corn bread, soda bread, cakes and other baking. Baking powder is baking soda mixed with cream of tartar. Kraft Foods Magic Baking Powder does not provide Food Facts on the labels of small jars in Canada. The published information is that 1 tsp has 300 mg. of sodium. Substitutions for baking powder involve 1/4 tsp of baking soda plus some acid (e.g. vinegar, cream of tartar) for each tsp baking powder. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. It has 1,259 mg. of sodium per teaspoon, which explains the food facts for baking powder. The science of substitution for baking soda and baking powder is to use potassium bicarbonate, which is the key ingredient of Featheweight – not an widely available (i.e. in grocery stores) product. It is available as a supplement but has a list of side effects and do not use if taking medication warnings. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for quick breads, and suggestions on low sodium “baking mixes”. “Natural” products that that might trap CO2. Some recipes for some baked goods suggest that some natural products may trap CO₂ e.g. whipped egg whites.
Salt
Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book Salt: a World History (2002) tells of the use of salt to bake bread in Egypt (3,000 BCE), The production of salt may have started about 8,000 years ago. The right ratio of flour to salt and yeast, among other things, means a loaf that will rise on time, and not overproof or balloon. The loaf should spring in the oven and crown to form a dome.
Salt is part of the process for most bread sold by grocery stores and bakeries large and small. Bread is high in sodium, as an effect of the baking process.
Salt is a standard and necessary ingredient in most formulas and recipes. Salt:
affects the development of gluten. It affects chemical bonds in amino acids in proteins in flour that has been exposed to mixed with water. It makes the gluten more tenacious and elastic;
controls yeast which affects fermentation. Fermentation affects flavour but it also affects rise, which affects the size of the loaf and the production line.
A few bread styles, such as Tuscan bread, are made without salt.
Salt can be reduced, with a reduction in the amount of yeast. Some books and internet pages eliminating salt but incorrectly list the same amount of yeast that would be used if there was salt in the recipe! This will may bake or collapse. In a bread machine, the dough will balloon and may or collapse before it overflows the pan.
Every reduction in salt has to be balanced with a reduction of yeast. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for yeasted breads and a note on the general adjustment for yeasted bread recipes. Artisan bread baking writers suggest that adjusting the salt in formulas leads to unsatifactory results – e.g. Peter Reinhart, Artisan Bread Every Day (Ten Speed Press, 2009) at p. 15 suggests not reducing by more than 10%. Salt and kneading affect gluten. It is easy to get to reduce salt to 50% and 33% reduce the salt added to the mixing machine when dough is mixed. These reductions are difficult for industrial bakers. Changes in salt will affect the gluten, affecting texture, and storage of bread, as well as fermentation and taste.
The most precise way of measuring is by weight.
Goal
Reduction
Use Salt
Use Yeast
50%
50%
50%
50%
33%
67%
33%
33%
The accepted rule of thumb is reducing proportionately by weight to maintain the same percentage
Mixing and Kneading
Machines
Modern professional bakers work with hundred of kilograms of flour and water. Professional bakers have control over how long to mix/knead, rise (ferment/proof), bake, and over oven temperature. Ingredients are mixed and kneaded in large industrial mixers, fermented, put into pans and put into ovens, baked, turned out and packaged. The dough goes into pans in small irregular lumps. It has to rise and flow to fill the pan, spring when pans go in the oven, but not spring above the limited headspace of the pan. Professional bakers may use 10-15 minutes of “intensive mixing” – the mechanical mixing of yeasted white flour dough was dominant in professional bakeries for French loaves until Raymond Calvel devised the hybid style in the 1960s. Intensive mixing develops gluten in white flour rapidly. Home bakers with stand mixers use slower speeds due to limitations of machinery (see the stand mixer review by America’s Test Kitchen in print and YouTube) or to use a hybrid, modified or improved mixing method. Overmixing is a risk for professional bakers using industrial mixers. Machine mixing can stretch dough too much or too often, breaking the gluten strands. An overmixed dough cannot hold the gases, and will not rise. Intensive mixing may affect a loaf with effects short of the complete failure caused by overmixing. Home bakers can have the same problem. A variety of mixers are available to the home baker:
Food processors can mix dough, although a food processor might only handle 3 cups of flour, and has one speed – very fast. The mixing time may be less than a minute. Some food processors have a dough speed and/or special blade to mix dough. The risk of overmixing dough in a food processor is well recognized.
A home stand mixer can handle several cups of flour, at low-medium speed settings. The power output of a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a 5 quart bowl may be 325 watts. Larger stand mixers may output 800 watts. A Bosch Compact Kitchen Machine may output 400 watts into its dough hook in its stand mixer configuration. They have to be used at the right settings and for a short time.
Baker’s Percentage
Professional bakers and some home bakers express ingredient lists or recipes in baker’s percentage (B%) to use consistent processes to manufacture a consistent product. Professional bakers may use 2 pounds of salt and .77 pound of instant yeast per 100 pounds of flour. The B% for salt is 2%; the B% for instant yeast with most loaves made with bread flour is .7% but B% can vary. It may be over 1%. A yeast B% of .7% in one loaf works out to .3 ounces = 8.5 grams = 8,500 mg. salt per 3 cups (15 ounces) of flour. A normal loaf of bread weighing 1 ½ lbs. (a bread machine medium loaf) has 3,400 milligrams of sodium per loaf – several hundred milligams per slice or serving. Home bakers work with small amounts of salt and yeast. Bread machines use very small amounts for single loaves.
Measurement of salt and yeast by weight is desireable for home bakers and bread machine bakers. Few home bakers have scales precise enough.
Conversion? The great majority of recipes refer to standard ground table salt. For table salt: 1 tsp = 5.7 grams or .20 oz. Some fine crystal table salt on the market in the US weighs 7 grams per teaspoon. I do not pay attention to this information unless the recipe I am referring to has used a coarse or fine salt:
America’s Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking (2012) lists several brands of kosher salt and sea salt and compares them to table salt, suggesting that Morton’s brand is the standard for table salt at 1 tsp = 7.15 g.
Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp of table salt = .25 oz which converts to 7 grams.
The size of the salt crystals affects solubility, which can affect the distribution of salt in the dough, and effect of salt on yeast. However a gram of kosher salt works as well as a gram of table salt for baking bread.
Some sources say for instant yeast: 1 tsp = 3.15 grams. Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp instant yeast = .11 oz which converts to 3.12 grams. It is hard for home user to verify the weight of a teaspoon of instant yeast with home tools and methods. Instant yeast may vary slightly depending on the manufacturer, time and how the yeast has been stored and handled,
I had been taking prescribed hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) 12.5 mg per day, a diuretic – to control (reduce) blood pressure, since 2011. It was not effective to counteract edema, a side effect of another medication. It has side effects that interfere with digestion and absorbing potassium. I was hospitalized for 2 days in June 2021 as a result of falling. Someone on the hospital team thought I had a potassium deficiency (this was not suggested to have been a cause of the accident). Someone changed my medications to eliminate the diuretic, and prescibed a potassium supplement, for the days I was in hospital. This 2 day intervention did not affect my blood pressure, as far as I was told.
Potassium is an element; the chemical symbol is K. It is measured in milligrams (1/1000 of a gram, abbreviated as mg.) in nutrition. It is an electrolyte, and can also be called a mineral or a nutrient. The US Department of Health, National Institute of Health (NIH), Office of Dietary Supplements, publishes an online Fact sheet for Health Professionals which recommends an adult male person weighing about 80 kg. should consume 3,400 milligrams of potassium per day. The fact sheet, which has been varied 2018-2021, lists some foods high in potassium. The putative source data is found in the US Department of Agriculture’s database, available onlinein 2021 by an application program interface called FoodData Central. The database includes
SR (Standard Reference) data, in the USDA “National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Legacy (2018)”;
Branded data about foods presented as branded commodities “generated by industry through a public-private partnership” with LabelInsight, a data firm.
The data is not easy to search. A food source may be spelled differently than expected – moong beans may be moong or mung (the latter is a more popular version of spelling in on product packages in the USA). Many dry beans are listed both raw and cooked (boiled), but not all.
The information in the NIH fact sheet generally aligns to the database, but do not always align on product or serving,. The fact sheet seems confused on how much a consumer will consume as a serving. The NIH fact sheet does not list all the foods high in potassium. I transposed some foods from the fact sheet in a table below, and interpolated some foods – mainly legumes – not in the fact sheet. Comments on the fact sheet, the list, and the table:
A calorie is a unit of heat. Literally, food scientists burned food to see how much energy the food contained;
The Calorie on a food package is 1,000 times larger than the calorie used in chemistry and physics. A Calorie is a kilocalorie (kcal,), the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius.(), abbreviated mg.
Food
Amount
Size
K (mg)
Mass (g)
Water (g)
Calories
Total carbs (g)
Starch (g)
Sugars (g)
lipids (fat) g.
protein (g)
Dried apricots
½ cup
1101
80
24.7
193
50
42.7
Cooked lentils
1 cup
731
198
138
230
39.8
17.9
Boiled mature White beans: Navy, Great Northern Cannellini
*The mg. K number for 1% milk. The fact sheet says 366 mg; the database says 391 mg.
The NIH fact sheet states 1 cup of cooked lentils contains 731 mg K. It aligns with lentils cooked by boiling in water, without salt, in the database. This is a large “serving”. 1 cup of dry lentils braised in 2 cups of water yields what consumers would regard as 4 servings. The USDA data search returns on specific lentils and legumes in the branded product data are incomplete. Some show raw red lentils as containing significant potassium. US and Canadian farmers have been growing mainly large green and brown lentils. Red lentils are split, hulled, brown lentils. But hulled whole brown lentils are red or pink in appearance and marketed by farmers and distributors as red lentils. Brown lentils became scarce in grocery stores near me during the Covid-19 pandemic; red lentils (hulled split brown lentils) remained plentiful. French green lentils and black lentils are available some times in some stores.
Dried apricots and raisins, and banana and apples contains sugars, which are metabolized differently than the carbohydrates in vegetables including legumes such as beans and lentils. Sugar metabolizes into body fat if the body does not need the energy within hours of consumption. Some of the foods listed as high in K provide a rationale for eating high sugar fruits and dried fruits.
Spinach is bulky when raw but wilts. Folding a few cups of chopped raw spinach into a hot dish is easy and fast.
I have recipes for Aloo Palak (potato/spinach stir fry), Aloo Gobi (potato/cauliflower stir fry), Aloo Baingain (potato/eggplant stir fry), braised lentils with spinach, dal (split hulled moong beans) with spinach and other dishes. The potato/vegetable recipes, like lentils, will make several servings but are high in potassium. The grocery stores have been able to provide potatoes, spinach, cauliflower, eggplants and several kind of dry lentils and beans in 2020 and 2021.
A cup of wheat bran has 684 mg. of K. I have recipes for a dozen bran muffins made with 1.5 cups of bran and a half cup of raisins has 1642 mg. of K. 1 muffin has 137 mg. of K.
My old pedals were worn and had been damaged by corrosion after an incident in storage last winter
Platform or Clipless
Bike pedals have been flat (platform) pedals since safety bicycles began to be made and sold. Many bikes are sold with flat pedals, which riders will replace.
Bikeradar did a large survey or review early in 2021. Outdoor Gear Labs did another. Both identified several clipless cleat systems, along with Shimano’s, as choices. Cleats may be attached to the shoes with three bolts or two:
Three bolt cleats are large, thick, and stiff. They fit a retention mechanism on one side of a corresponding pedal. The large 3 hole “delta” cleat has dominated the market for road cleats since the Look Delta design, which Shimano emulated with its SPD-DL pedals. Shimano uses 13.5 mm M5 bolts to secure its SPD-SL 3 hole cleats to the shoes. 3 hole cleats fit fit below the sole , and only fit into one side of pedal. Most of the pedals in the Shimano Dura-Ace, Ultegra and 105 road bike product lines are 3 hole models.
Two hole cleats are smaller. Typically two hole cleats, including the popular Shimano SPD, cleats are used with pedals with retention mechanisms on two opposite sides of the pedal. Shimano uses 11.5 mm M5 bolts to secure SPD cleats to shoes. The cleat engagement uses a spring, adjustable by rotating a bolt in the medal. The pedal is marked to confirm the direction to turn the bolt; there is no tension marking or gauge on the pedal, (The SPD system is a mountain bike system and is marketed by Shimano for those uses.)
M5 bolts are the standard device to fix or secure cleants to shoes. There are “cleat nut” shoe plates that fit in soles of two bolt shoes. They are tapped for M5 bolts.
Some flat pedals, made and sold for mountain bikes, have small metal pins for grip – these depend on a shoe that will grip the pins and will not shred.
Shimamo SPD
Shimano SPD cleats support several Shimano pedals and are compatible with some OEM pedals. The SPD system has two slightly different cleats. The (black) SM-SH51 is “single direction” release. The direction is a rotation away for the crank, in the plane of the pedal – when the rider’s anke is at a normal angle to the leg, perpedicular as if the rider were walking, The (silver) SM-SH56 is “multi-directional” release which is not compatible with a few Shimano pedals.
I used a pair of Shimano PD-324 clipless pedals on a Giant hardtail mountain bike and on a Trek FX 7.4 mountain bike hybrid. The PD-M324 as originally a Deore line mountain bike “trekking” pedal. Shimano’s mountain bike product lines are complex. Deore was a line of touring components which crossed over when Shimano launched the Deore XT line in 1983. Deore is now the 4th Shimano mountain bike component tier after XTR, Deore XT, and SLX. A pair weighed over 500 g. The PD-M324 and cleat retention on one side, and a platform on the other. It was flat on both sides. I changed to Shimano PD-A530 pedals, which are similiar to the Shimano PD-A600. Both the PD-A530 and PD-A600 are Tiagra series pedals in the 4th tier of the Shimano road series. Pedals are not part of component groupsets, but Shimano identies some components as groups of related components within Shimano’s system of using product lines to market components.
Both pedals support(ed) the Shimano two hole SPD cleats on one side. The SPD is a “step in” system. Riders clip in by locking cleats on the soles of the shoes into a fitting on the pedals. The PD-A530 was lighter than the M324 at 383 grams per pair. The PD-A530 had an SPD fitting on one side and a flat ribbed surface on the opposite side of the pedal. The PD-A530 is “concave” (? convex) on the the side with the cleat fitting. The cleat lock is over spindle. This emulated the action of other cleats – it let the rider concentrate power on the central axis of the pedal at the ends of the crank arms. This required the rider to have the fitting side of the pedal facing up and get the front of the cleat into the centimeter of space ahead of the spindle. The shoe did not otherwise make other contact with peddle. The PD-A600 was a one sided pedal which differed from the PD-A530 this way “recessed SPD shoe compatible allows off the bike walking”. Jan Heine, writing in Bicycling Quarterly (Spring 2021, No. 75, at p. 108), praised the PD-A600 for these features:
” .. excellent bearings
” … support the rider’s feet on the pedal body … feet do not rock as you pedal”.
The PD-A600 was not on the market when I acquired the PD-A530 pedals. The PD-A600 was lighter at 286 grams per pair, and different than the PD-A530. It was no longer on the market in 2021 when I decided to replace the pedals. Shimano had discontinued the PD-A600 and moved the spd cleat into the Ultegra road bike line with the PD-ES600 in 2020. The PS-ES600 has the recessed fitting,and calling this an Ultegra product meant a price increase (to $140 a pair in Canada in the summer of 2021). Jan Heine noted some disadvantages of the PD-ES600:
” … the [back] of the cage has been eliminated … means they are no longer weighted to facilitate clipping in.
“At the end of the ride, the cleats are sometimes hard to disengage.
Jan Heine’s comments identify:
the benefits of having a pedal as a platform for the foot and having a cleat recessed in the sole of the shoe that lets the shoe contact the pedal.
a problem that can occur with a one sided pedals. The rider has little grip on the second side if any, and a rider can lose speed before flipping the pedal and making a connection with the cleat.
Jan Heine thought the Shimano XTR line PD-M9000 mountain bike pedal worked better for his styles of riding (CX and all road, I think) than the Ultegra PD-ES-600. While the XTR is a spindle with engagement mechanisms on opposite side of the spindle – it lacks any platform, Jan Heine thought the XTR was easy to engage and disengage. He noted the that the fronts of the retention mechanisms had a a “depession that guides the cleat. The XTR pedal is considerablly more expensive than other 2 hole cleat mountain bike pedals, including other Shimano MTB pedals, and hard to find in 2021. It is built to a different standard. I wasn’t able to find one to examine. It has shallow concave scallop in the fronts of the retentions. This appears to be done by grinding. The scallop is present in Shimano MTB pedals models in the XTR grade 9000 and 9100, but other Shimano MTB pedals lack this feature.
His comparison asks questions:
why not use a small 2 hole cleat on an all road bike or a gravel bike?
is a double sided 2 hole system better than a one sided pedal fitting to a 2 hole cleat?
HT T1
Ourdoor Gear reviewed the HT T1 enduro pedal favourably and identified it as editor’s choice for a clipless system. The HT T1 was available online. It uses a proprietary cleat which does not work with Shimano SPD system cleats. (The HT X type cleats are thicker than SPD cleats, among other things). It uses a large spring which can be set much tighter than the springs in Shimano pedals. This is popular with MTB riders. See:
The cleats are multi-directional. Twist your foot in any plane to release.
The spring is thicker and strong than the spring in a Shimano SPD pedal. Some online sources suggest that 50% on the HT indicator is equivalent to the highest tension on a Shimano SPD retention spring. The gauge in the mechanism that indicates how tight the spring is tensioned. The gauges each track the position of a threaded plate that secures the end of the bolt that tensions the spring. The gauge is a series of 8 lines along a slot in which the plate is visible.
The HT cleat retention sytem is identified as “spring binder” by LakeShoes, which offers advice about how the cleat should line up with sole of the shoe. Lake Shoes provides advice on how highly torqued the bolts holding the cleat onto the sole should be set for some pedal systems, but not the torque for the HT T1. HT has the numbers – 5 to 8 newton meters – in the product manual. HT supplied two sets of bolts to hold the cleats to the shoes. Both seem to be M5 bolts. I later threaded them into a thread checker at hardware store to confirm. Both sets were flat headed & countersunk (tapered on the back of the head). They are specialty bolts with have an opening for a 4 mm Allan Key, like cap screws. One set were ≧11.5 mm long, the standard for SPD cleats. The second set were 13 mm long, providing an extra 1.5 mm. of threaded bolt to engage with the tapped “nut plates” in the sole of the shoe. Longer bolts will project through the tapped cleat nut plate, and abrade the insole. The extra length will be required when the rider deploys shims (as shown in the Lake shoes drawings). It is almost necessary to deal thread into the cleat nut plates through the HT X type cleats.
Oops
On the return trip from the West Shore, I saw an incident when some 2 of 4 or 5 persons oncoming on road bikes lost control on the E&N in View Royal. They were riding in a group, in single file but slowed down to pass some pedestrians walking side by side, which affected riders coming from both directions and caused a momentary traffic jam. Two riders in the group went into the ditch. Bruises and road rash, and contact with the West coast rain forest underbruch. They went into the ditch on their right and did not cross into my path. I stopped and assisted, stopping and unclipping. I knew one of the riders, who used to work in the same branch of the same Ministry. This kind of incident is a risk on Victoria’s “multi-use” trails which are not set up for fast cycling, for wide vehicles, or for pedestrians who crowd or cross the centre lines of the trails.
I initially set the spring tension at 50% of maximum, which is more tension than I was used to. Within a few Km of starting my first test ride, I stopped and dialed the springs down . The cleats work like a Shimano multi direction SPD cleat but some motions work better.
I had a problem unclipping the left shoe a few Km later where the E&N trail crosses the rail line at the end of Hallowell (west and south of the Admiral’s Walk shopping centre). I was able to unclip, and continued to the Canadian Forces base gate on Admirals Road at the end of Colville. I crossed the tracks at the gate, went up Colville, turned onto Intervale and turned on the E&N from Intervale. I had unclipped and clipped a few more times. I was getting uneasy and began to looking for a place to stop. I thought I could get off on the shoulder of the next crossing street, Hutchinson. I slowed down but could not unclip my left foot. I was able to get some support from the chain link fence which is immediately beside the trail – on the left. I was able to, unclip my right foot for support and mobility, undo my left shoe and get the bike off the trail. I was not able to get at the bolts holding the cleat. I undid the bolt that pre-tensions the retaining spring, release my left shoe, and remove the cleat from the shoe – without losing any more parts. One of the two cleat retaining bolts had worked loose and had disappeared. I was able to put the shoe on and ride home, using the left pedal as a platform pedal. The GPS stopped recording when I stopped. The walk off the trail was too slow to restart recording until I was on the trail and pedalling. The gap shows my move to the wrong side of the trail but is otherwise nearly invisible in my GPS track of the ride. Later, I reassembled the cleat retaining spring; and
confirmed, with the thread checker in a hardware store that the bolts are standard pitch M5 bolts;
found standard pitch M5 bolts 16 mm long at 2 hardware stores. Both stores had M5 zinc (plated) steel bolts, flatheaded and countersunk, with slot or Phillips heads. Either would work. There are shortages of all sorts of things (the economy has been disrupted by Covid and the other shocks of 2020-21) and having the bolts in hand provides options,Phillips heads have some advantages but come with the risk that the bolt head strips and rounds when torqued. With some enquiry and looking around, I located M5 stainless steel bolts, flatheaded and countersunk, with Phillips heads. Still vulnerable to rounding, but a bit stronger. I cut them down to ≤13 mm with a Dremel tool, and reinstalled the cleat.
The cleat retaining bolts should be fully engaged and torqued to the manufacturer’s specification to avoid the risk of losing a bolt, which will probably lead to being unable to unclip. Jan Heine describes voming to a stop with your foot stuck in the pedal as one of the worst nightmares of any cycist. I agree. I was lucky in not crashing, and in finding the repair parts. I fixed the problem and reinstalled the cleats properly.
This system signals cleat engagment with a firm click that I can feel and hear. The pedal provides a platform for pedalling unclipped. It has 2 pins at the front which allows me pedal and make a second try to find the front of the spring and clip in if I miss on getting the front of the cleat into the front of the spring.
This started with my discovering the difficulties of dismounting tubeless ready tires from my gravel bike in the fall of 2019 and the spring of 2020. Changing a tire is not supposed to be a job requiring shop time. Tires, in principle, can be repaired and replaced by a user.
Clinchers
The pneumatic bicycle tire was one of the technologies that made the safety bicycle successful. It evolved by innovations in wheels, wheel rims, tires and inner tubes into the clincher used on most bikes, including the utility bikes common in 20th century. The tire casing is a laminate of fabric and rubber. The tread is hardened rubber laminated onto the casing.
The Bicycle Technical Information (“BTI” ie Sheldon Brown) tires page discusses the kinds of tires, including the tubular tire used in racing. The dominant technology uses clincher tires and inner tubes. The BTI page on flat tires summarizes. This illustration (from a Wikipedia page) shows a tire, tire bead, inner tube, bead channel and hook, in a cross-section view. The diagrams and pictures at Bike Gremlin, Bike Touring News and Cycling Tips (below) also illustrate.
rim;
rim tape, in a central well or valley (in a tubeless ready wheel);
rim braking surface (on a wheel for a bike with rim brakes);
bead, laminated to tire casing, engaged by the bead hook in the bead channel;
inner tube;
casing;
tread.
Pneumatic tires became the dominant technology for automobiles and motorcycles. The tire industry developed tubeless tires and rims for motorized vehicles and for lightweight carts and appliances.
Tubeless bicycle tires were developed for mountain bikes and gradually acccepted for use on other bikes. Tubeless tires are supposed to recover from minor punctures during a ride and repaired later. Tubeless tires are used at lower pressure than the same tire with an inner tube, which is desireable in many kinds of riding. Tubeless ready rims and wheels have become, arguably, the standard equipment for new bikes in many price and quality classes. A tubeless ready tire is a tubeless tire without the sealants and the tubeless valve. It is basically a clincher, and requires an inner tube. Some tubeless ready wheels have rim tape, but not all of them. The rim tape may extend over the shelves of the bead channel. Many riders carry an inner tube to repair a tubeless tire in the field.
Cycling Tips, an online publication, published a guide to tubeless tires, An Endless FAQ, in 2019 and updated it in 2021 [updated October 2021].
The tire and the rim
The normal process for detaching (unmounting) a clincher tire and replacing an inner tube is shown in this Park Tool video. A clincher normally disengages from the rim easily when the tire is deflated. After disengaging the bead, it may be necessary to use tire levers to get the bead off the rim. Hydraulic, pneumatic and manual bead breaker devices are available and basically necessary for agricultural, industrial, truck, automobile and motorcycle tires, but such devices are not used in bike shops and almost never available for a roadside repair.
It is harder to unmount a tubeless tire than an ordinary clincher. Tubeless tires fit tightly. Friction between the tire casing over the bead, and the bead channel in the wheel rim is a major factor. The bead channel may be machined to wrap around and hook over the bead. If the tire was mounted with sealant for tubeless use, the sealant may a factor. When the tire has been deflated, the bead has to be pushed off the shelf into the valley in the middle of the rim. It is necessary to unhook the bead and push it into that valley. This takes some force, but can be done without tools or extreme measures. It may be necessary to work around the rim and push in at several places and find the best place to gets the bead out of the channel and continue around the rim and get it out of the channel before pushing it into the valley. It may be necessary to do this on each side. I found videos of methods for extreme instances on YouTube:
Some sources advise riders to practise the skills of dismounting a tire and installing or changing a tire in order to reduce time lost on a ride. This skill involves tactile feedback and muscles that may not have been worked that intensively for some time. It is worth learning.
Mounting and inflating
It is easy to press one bead into the rim. The user may want to align a marking on the sidewalls with the valve hole at this stage. The inner tube can be pressed into the tire when one side of the tire has been pressed into the wheel. The inner tube should be empty or nearly empty. The valve stem should be pressed through the hole in rim, and the inner tube positioned with the stem perfectly perpendicular to the rim.
Getting the remaining (second) bead into the rim can be done by hand if the beads are kept down in the rim channel. It is better to run fingers along the sidewall of the side that is already on the rim to make sure it is in the well. The remaining side can be pressed into the rim, starting some distance from the valve. It may be best to start opposite the valve. About half of the remaining side will fit easily, but the rest will also yield. It can be worked in short sections. It may be necessary to pinch both walls to make sure the first side is still in the well. It may be necessary to hold the bead down in one place with one hand while working the bead that is still outside along the rim with the other hand. Eventually, the section still outside the rim will be short enough that it can be be pulled into the rim. It can be done by hand. Using tire levers to pry the tire over the rim presents the risk of catching the inner tube and creating a pinch flat.
It is advisable to work the fingers of one or both hands along the sidewalls to find any places the tube may protruding outside the edge of the sidewall or caught, and press the sidewalls back to release the inner tube. The sidewall can be rubbed and pulled up into the bead channel. A tubeless rider will follow a similiar process, but will need to take extra steps to get a preliminary seal.
Presta Valve
If the valve is a threaded Presta valve – which is common on modern bikes, the captive nut (which threads on the thin rod that fits inside the stem) should be tightened down. This locks the valve core in the closed or sealed position. The BTI glossary entry on the Presta valve and several articles by Jobst Brandt are informative. The presta valve has an internal stem that seals the valve, which is locked by a tiny nut threaded on a thin brass rod. A Presta valve does not have an internal spring. The stem rod can be easily bent or damaged! It is worth a little preventative care, and some caution in use. The external cap that threads onto the exterior of the stem does not have retain air, but provides some protection against impacts on the stem cap rod.
The stem cap rod is brass, and bends. One risk it that a pump hose, a pump or a pressure gauge can bend the stem cap rod while the device is being attached to or removed from the valve stem. The threads cut on the outside of a Presta stem can in theory be used to screw on a pump hose but that is rare – many chucks friction fit over the end of a stem or are locked with a lever.
If the tube seems to be leaking from the valve core, and core is a removable threaded core, it is worth tightening the core with a tool (that can grasp the part of the core above the end of the valve stem).
When both beads appear to be in place, start pumping. The beads of a tubeless tire often will audibly pop into place. The valve stem may have a jam nut that threads onto the outside of the stem to hold the stem in the wheel rim. See above – this nut should be tightened down.
Tire Pressure
The pressure marked on a tire is a consumer protection warning – a fraction of pressure that will blow the tire with an inner tube off the rim. It is not a recommendation for performance. High pressure was believed to lower rolling resistance, but that theory or belief has been contradicted. The operating pressure is normally much lower than the marked pressure. The maximum pressure for 700c x 38 with an inner tube is 75 psi. I ran the Panaracer Gravelking SK at 60 psi; I got less rolling resistance in the low 50’s and mid to high 40s (psi). For a 38-40 mm tire, with an inner tube, the pressure will be in the 3 to 3.2 bar range or lower. The recommended pressure for tubeless use is even lower. Fatter tires run at lower pressures. The appropriate pressure depends on several factors. The modern thinking is stated in this Cycling Weekly article. There are some good online calculators; a couple are noted in the article. I have used the Silca calculator. The full “pro” version is free, although at this time it requires registration by entering an email address.
The recipe book is Anupi Singla’s Indian for Everyone, published in 2014 by the Surrey Books imprint of Agate Publishing; also a quality paperback 2016, and an ebook in the Amazon Kindle store.
The problem in the recipes for Aloo Mattar at p. 95, Panak Aloo at p. 97, and Aloo Gobi at p. 98, in the printed editions, is the cooking time for the potatoes (aloo). In these recipes, the raw chopped potatoes are added to lightly fried onions and spices and stir fried for a couple of minutes and then cooked on low after other vegetables are added, for about 20 minutes. These are all sabji or stir fried dishes, in this author’s presentation. The result was crunchy and barely cooked potatoes.
The author prefers to use peeled Russet potatoes. Russets is the collective term of a few cultivars, including Idaho – the brown, thick skinned starchy potatoes chosen as baking potatoes and potatoes for deep frying as “French fries. This does not explain the outcome.
The error is a missed or unstated step. The missing step adds to the time to prepare this meal, and involves additional vessels and resources – another pot on the stove or an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker to cook or parcook the potatoes. Madhur Jaffrey has similiar vegetable stir fry recipes for potatoes in At Home with Madhur Jaffrrey but she has boiled the potatoes before using them.
It is not necessary to cook the potatoes until they crumble, but the potatoes need some cooking time before putting them a stir fry.
The technique to cook potatoes on in a vessel on a stove is to scrub the potatoes and cut out eyes and other visible surface defects,cover the potatoes in water, bring the pot to a boil and simmer. Thick skinned starchy potatoes should be better peeled. Peeling thinner skinned potatoes (i.e. white or yellow or many varieties of red) is a matter of taste and purpose. Salting the cooking water is an option. The cooking time depends on the kind of potatoes and size of the pieces. Baby waxy potatoes may take less than 15 minutes. Small potatoes and quarters of medium and larger potatoes may take 20-25 minutes.
The cooking time for potatoes at high pressure (11-12 psi; ie. at 242-244 degrees F.) in an Instant Pot or other electric pressure multi-cooker is 8 minutes. To parcook, I use 3 minutes on high or 4-5 minutes on low. I use a bain marie method – the potatoes in a ceramic vessel on a rack in the pressure pot. (There is water in the pressure pot of course, put the potatoes are cooked by steam water that being boiled in water). For pressure cookers, some fluid is needed but it is not necessary to cover the potatoes; the potatoes can be kept out of the fluid by using a rack or steamer basket, or a bain marie vessel. The cooking time (on high) and release method vary:
Potato
Fluid (per JN)
Time | release Stovetop 15 psi
Electric or Instant Pot 12 psi
JN
LP
LP
Whole large or medium
.5-1 cup
10-14 min. | Natural
10-13 min. | Either
13-15 min. | Either
Quarters Large chunks
.25-.5 cups More fluid for mashed
4-5 min. | Manual
5 min. | Either
8 min. | Either
Small whole
.5 cups
8-10 min. | Natural
5 min. | Either
7 min. | Either
Baby, fingerling
.25-.5 cups
1-2 min. | Manual
5 min. | Natural
8 min. | Natural
Sliced or diced
.25-.5 cups
3 min. | Manual
Jill Nussinow, Vegan Under Pressure; Laura Pazzaglia, Hip Pressure Cooking
It is possible to add a little water and leave the dish simmering and steaming for an extra hour. This works with peas (Aloo Mattar) but less well with cauliflower.
In the early 21st century, the most common bicycle tires are pneumatic clincher or bead clincher tires. The tire has a bead, formerly made of metal wire. Modern tires are manufactured with material that can rebound into a circle after being folded for packaging and shipment. The tire contains an inner tube, which is soft and vulnerable to punctures and tears. Clincher wheels curve into a bead hook at the rim to catch and hold the bead. In tubeless wheel, the rim has
a central groove which can be described as a valley or well;
a rim strip to seal the spoke holes
bead channels – the spaces between
a shelf, between the rim wall and the well, and
a bead hook.
Tubeless tires are clincher tires sealed and inflated directly – no inner tube. Tubeless systems generally require sealants installed in the tire; tubeless tires are supposed to self seal to mitigate small punctures. Riders may carry inner tubes to install a tube in a tubeless tire to mitigate a larger puncture. A tubeless tire bead is designed and manufactured to fit into tubeless wheel rims. A tubeless or tubeless ready wheel has a machined bead channel. The beads and the rim channels are supposed to fit tightly enough to be air tight when the tire is inflated. The seal is normally obtained by applying tire sealant to the edge of the side walls along the bead.
The wheels on my 2019 Topstone are “tubeless ready” WTB i23, a metal alloy with a 23 mm rim; the 23-622 model. (WTB has versions of i23 including a “26 inch” mountain bike rim, and i23 (23-622) for 700c tires from 700c x 32 to 700c x 46). The 23 mm measurement is taken between the rims in the bead channelat bead seat. The tires were “tubeless ready” WTB Nano 700c x 40. Some manufacturers (e.g. Mavic) manufacture rims and tire beads to the Uniform System Tubeless (UST) standard. The bead seat is designed to accept and hold the beads of UST tires without tape. WTB’s tubeless metal rims are sealed with plastic rib tape (liner) which adheres to the rim. The rim channel and wheel beads are beadlock – which is WTB’s way of saying manufactured to the UST standard. WTB, like other manufacturers, calls tubeless tires a modern improvement or feature and calls its beadlock system a feature. It is hard to unmount a tubeless tire from a rim to replace a tire or to fix a flat. It requires a skill that has to be learned. It can be a problem with some wheels and tires as noted in this YouTube review of the Topstone (at the end of the 3 minute video). I
Tire sizes are normally described by height. Height is the diameter across the wheel on the outside of the tire, measured on the mounted and inflated tire. The height is the nominal exterior diameter of the tire, which was used by manufacturers of tires and other components. 700c was the term used in a French system. The height, assuming the tire is a perfectly round torus, should be the diameter of the rim plus the 2 x the diameter of the tire. For 700c x 28, this works out to 678 mm which is almost 28 inches (700 mm. = 27.559 inches) . The tire, inflated, has an irregular oval cross section, sort of egg or pear shaped. Diagram below. A tire is always marked with a tire size in a nominal diameter system, and a size in the International Standards Organization ISO or ETRTO system. The most common tires on gravel and all-road bikes are 700c tires – considerably fatter than 700c road bike tires. 700c is a standard for tires with a nominal outside diameter around 700 mm (28 inches). There are skinny 700c x 25 (ISO 25-622) tires and fatter 700c x 36 (ISO 36-622) tires. The 622 in the ISO descriptions of 700c tires refer to the 622 mm diameter of the wheel.
700c (ISO 622) is also the standard for describing larger “niner” and “niner +” (29 inch x 2+ inch) wheels. 650b is a standard for tires with a nominal diameter around 650 mm (27.5 inches). The ISO descriptions of 650b tires refer to the 584 mm diameter of the wheel and the tire.
The other number in the nominal diameter or ISO description is the bead seat diameter (“bsd”) – the width measured across the tire or the rim at at the inner bead seat where the tire bead fits into the bead seat of a wheel. The width is usually the same in the nominal diameter and ISO systems. There are some outliers. A tire may be 700c x 38 and 622-40.
A higher bsd means a fatter tire, mounted and inflated, with a larger diameter and circumference than a narrow tire. The actual thickness (width from sidewall to sidewall, from the outside)≥ bsd. Actual thickness varies, depending on pressure and load. For higher bsd numbers, the thickness starts to push out. Height (outer diameter) and thickness can vary slightly depending on the construction and inflation of the tire. The height and thickness of some tires:
Tire Size
ISO
Circumference ≅
Diameter (C/π )
Thickness
Source
700c x 18
18-622
Generic/Standard
2070 mm
658 mm
700c x 25
25-622
Generic/Standard
2111 mm
672 mm
700c x 28
28-622
Generic/Standard
2130 mm
678 mm
≅ 28 mm
650b x 50
50-584
Generic/Standard
2149 mm
684 mm
700c x 38
38-622
Generic/Standard
2180 mm.
694 mm
Clearance
The rear tire has to fit between the chain stays behind the bottom bracket and between the seat stays below a bridge below the seat. The bottom bracket shell accomodates a bb and a crank with a suitable Q factor. On the Topstone, the chain stays are straight and parallel to each other for a few cm behind the bottom bracket. The distance between the chain stays is about 56 mm in the parallel section where a 700c tire would have to fit. The The seat stays are straight and bend out to fit around the rear axle assembly (cassette and disc brake rotor). The distance between the seat stays is 66 mm where the tire runs. The front tire has to fit between the fork blades under the fork crown. The distance between the fork blades where a tire runs is 61 mm or more. (The measurements were made with a caliper with the wheels on the bike). The side clearances allow 700c x 40 mm tires. The clearances at the tops of the tires under the seat stay bridge and the front fork crown were tighter. The WTB Nano 700c x 40 tires were too big to allow for fenders. For subsequent model years, Cannondale shipped the Topstone with 700c x 37 WTB Riddlers, a slightly smaller and narrower tire (with small knobs).
The WTB Nano tires had a mountain bike type tread. The tread on the center line of the tire was made up of chevron shaped groups of cleats or knobs. There were alternating gaps in the chevron. I thought the tread caused vibration, noticeable at low speeds; experienced gravel riders reviewing it thought it made for a smooth ride. I agreed it was smooth unless speed dropped to under 12 km/h. I did not need cleat or knobs e for my riding on asphalt and packed gravel. I downsized the tires to 700c x 38 Panaracer GravelKing SK tires.The dense small knobs were smooth to ride, although I expect some drawbacks.
Some all-road and gravel bikes can be adapted to use 650b wheels and tires. The 650b standard is based on a 584 mm. diameter wheel. A 650b x 48c (ISO 48-584) wheel is as tall as a 700 x 28c. It has more rubber, and is wider and heavier. 650b x 48 is not as tall as a 700c x 38; it will fit into the fork under the fork crown and the seat stay bridge. René Herse states that its 650b x 42 tire is 41-43 mm wide, and its 650b x 48 is 49-50 mm wide. These tires will fit within the clearances in the Topstone, but fitting a 60 mm diameter fender for 48 mm tires would be awkward.
Fenders
Fenders were normal part of the design of all-purpose bikes used by commuters and city riders, and installed by manufacturers for most of the 20th century. Road bikes, imitating racing bicycles, were built without fenders or even mounting points for fenders. While fenders were useful for some uses of mountain bikes, fenders were hard to design. manufacture and install. Fenders for road bikes, hybrids, and mountain bikes became accessories. Fenders were more popular on touring bikes and endurance/randoneusse bikes.
To fit fenders, the rider needs to know the thickness of the tires, and the clearances in the bike frame. The front fender has to attach to the fork at or near the fork crown. The rear fender needs to attach to the frame behind the bottom bracket between the chain stays, and at a bridge between the seat tubes. The attachments at those points support the front parts of the fender in the proper position. Fenders stays hold the back parts of the fenders in position. Fender stays normally attach to the frame and the fork near the axles.
A fender should fit around an inflated tire, with horizontal and vertical clearance. The exterior diameter of the fender, measured across the base of the arc of the fender indicate that the fender needs that horizonal distance to fit between the seat stays or fork blades without cutting or bending the fender Velo Orange, a manufacturer of aluminum fenders, suggests an 8 mm. horizonal difference between the exterior diameter of the fender and the bead seat diameter of the tire. This suggests a 700 x 40c tire needs a 48 mm exterior fender. A fender should clear the tire vertically (along the radius of the circle) by about 20 mm where the fender covers the tire. There has to be a vertical gap of more than 20 mm from the inside of the fork crown or the seat stay bridge and the outside of the tire.
My first fenders for the Topstone were SKS P50 Chromoplastic Longboard Fenders, a popular model sold in many shops and online stores in the USA and Canada including Modern Bikes and Universal Cycles. SKS marketed these fenders as wide enough to cover 700c tires in the range from 700c x 38 to 700c x 45. The P50 fenders had an exterior diameter of 50 mm. Plastic is light but it is prone to twisting and vibration. The rear ender mounted easily to the eyelet between the chain stays behind the bottom bracket. SKS, like other fender manufacturers provides a fender bridge that has to be bent around the outside of the fender and crimped around the edges. This bridge has to be centered on the fender to align to the frame mounting fitting on a bridge between the seat stays, slid into position and crimped onto the fender. If this is not done successfully, the fender will be twisted out of true. There is very little margin for error . SKS chromoplastic fenders use V shaped stay ; each stay has 2 arms. These stays are designed to attached to eyelets at the ends of the chain stays. The stays did not quite line up to eyelet . I had to adapt some left over parts from a rack mount kit to fabricate little fins. I had to bend the stays out to balance the tension to keep the fender from rubbing, but it worked.
The front fender fit under the fork crown and appeared to have adequate clearrance over the tire, but did not clear the original 700c x 40 knobby/cleated WTB Nano tire. I downsized the tires. The next problem with those fenders was the lack of eyelets for fender stays at the ends of the fork blades. The only eyelets stays are on the inside of the fork, 15 cm above the end of the fork. This was not a good place for the SKS breakaway tab or for a V shaped stay. I was able to improvise an attachment for the SKS break-away fender stay mount, and bend the V arms of the stays to slide into the attachments on the fender. This worked for my rides in the winter of 2020-21. I began to get a rubbing noise at higher speeds on chipseal. The V stays did not support the plastic fender under those conditions.
Riders reported installing SKS plastic fenders on Cannondale road bikes in forums, Reddits and YouTube, but these riders referred to bikes with eyelets at the end of the fork blades. One English rider reported, in a YouTube video, using the Bontrager NCS plastic fenders on a Topstone with carbon forks. That fender has a single straight (adjustable) stay, which normally attaches to an eyelet at the end of fork blade, but can be attached to the eyelets on the Toptone. I installed aluminum Velo Orange fenders. These are light but rigid, and attach with a single stay on each side of the fender. This is how the stays fit, using the pre-drilled holes for the stay:
Carbon Fiber Fork
Carbon fiber forks are offered on many production road and gravel bikes with steel or aluminum alloy frames. A carbon fiber fork is light and stiff, which is supposed to improve steering, although this can be debated. A carbon fork on bike with disc brakes has to be stiff. A stiff fork does not dampen vibration. Many carbon forks lacks eyelets for racks and other devices, which limits some uses of the bike. The carbon composite must be laid over a metal component tapped to receive a bolt and act as an eyelet. This is tricky and expensive.
Crankarms and Cassette
I changed the stock 172.5 mm crankarms to 165 mm – a shorter radius and less stress on knees. I replaced the Shimano 105 11-32 cassette for an SRAM PG-1170 11 cog 11-36 for a couple more low, climbing gears. With the 30 tooth front ring, this change gives me 30×36 as the lowest gear.
This post was published in 2021, with some later editing and further thoughts after more experience.
Cooked or Canned
Cooked dry beans are a staple ingredient. Some recipes provide directions for cooking dry beans as a step in a recipe, or by reference to another recipe for cooked beans in the recipe source/collection. Some recipes call for canned beans, rinsed. This is common in slow cooker recipes. Canned bean are dry beans cooked in the canning process. Dry beans may take twice the cooking time as other ingredients, or may not cook properly. Canned beans have cooking fluid in the can. This may contain sodium and other residual ingredients. It may be unpalatable. The extra fluid may affect the recipe. Most recipes recommend rinsing the beans and discarding the fluid.
Cooked beans can be substituted for canned beans in any recipe. The benefits are not paying for factory cooking and other supplier and seller costs built into in the price of canned goods, and avoidance of salt and additives. The cooking fluid can be used in the recipe or set aside and used as a vegetarian stock – it depends on how it tastes.
1/2 cup of dry beans makes 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans, the amount in one 14 fluid ounce can of canned cooked beans. Precision is generally not necessary:
For recipes requiring precise proportions, you should always cook … the dried beans before you measure them, using the average equivalents as a rough guide to estimate the amount of dried beans you need to prepare. Many bean recipes are fairly forgiving and adjustable.
The Spruce Eats – How to Measure and Use Dried Beans
Soaking before cooking starts hydration. It reduces the cooking time and improves the result. This is true for every cooking method except the extremely slow simmering e.g. in a ceramic olla as Rick Bayliss describes in some of his books on Central American and Mexican cooking. Soaking for at least a few hours prepares dry beans. The common advice is to soak overnight. This may mean 12 hours but can mean over 20 hours. Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen explained its tests on soaking at pp. 256-258 of The Science of Good Cooking (2012).
Some phaseolus vulgaris (Central American beans) varietals take up more water than others. For instance cannellini (white kidney beans) absorb more than pinto peas or black turtle bean.
Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen discusses variations on soaking: soaking in water at ambient (room) temperature, quick-soaking cook dry beans for a short time in boiling water or in a pressure cooker. The “quick-soak” or parcooking methods use any appliance and vessel that can hold dry beans in boiling water. Anupy Singla’s slow cooker recipe (The Indian Slow Cooker) for red kidney beans says quick soak in boiling water, and 5 hours on high in an electric crock pot type slow cooker. Laura Pazzaglia discusses soaking methods and times in her article/lesson Long-soaking and Quick-soaking beans in the Pressure Cooker and soaking for pressure cookers (including Instant Pots) in her article/lesson Pressure Cooking DRY versus SOAKED Beans.
Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen also explains soaking in brine, and/or adding baking soda to the cooking water. These use sodium to some degree. I have not tried them, as I avoid sodium. Those publishing brands tend to aim at an audience of home cooks striving to cook like restaurants, most of which use salt heavily for the taste buds of modern consumers, sensitized to highly salted foods.
The claim that soaking dry beans removes “indigestable sugars” and helps to avoid intestinal gas is common but unverified. Beans contain sugars: stachyose, verbascose and raffinose which ferment in the digestive tract, producing gas. There is support for the claim that soaking removes some sugars in some medical and scientific literature. For instance see this Michigan State University extension publication. However, soaking cannot remove sugars without removing other nutrients and flavour ingredients, and probably does not remove much sugar.
Instant Pot options
The pressure cooker program can cook unsoaked dry beans. It can be used to “quick soak” dry beans.
The pressure cooker program or the slow cooker program can be used, of cousse to cook soaked beans.
Medium and Large Phaseolus & Chickpeas
Rick Bayless’s slow cooker recipes for black (turtle) beans and pinto beans in Mexican Everyday (2006) start with unsoaked dry beans, to emulate cooking in an olla, discussed in his Authentic Mexican (1987), and Mexico, One Plate at a Time (2000). In Mexico, One Plate at a Time (at p. 192) he reported cooking in an olla heated the beans and water to 205-210 degrees (F), with little evaporation. He says 6 hours on the high setting in a slow cooker. In an Instant Pot with the slow cooker program this is 6 hours on the high slow cooker using the the sealing lid, with the pressure valve set to vent. Other traditional slow cooker recipe propose 8-10 hours slow cooker low for unsoaked black, pinto, cranberry (i.e. medium Phaseolus). I cooked small recipes in a small round traditional slow cooker on low in lower times.
Chickpeas and the large dry beans such as red kidney, Borlotti, cannellini, cranberry can be slow cooked in an Instant Pot by a three stage process:
a few hours by the natural method of soaking in water at room temperature – the beans will take up some water and swell;
in the Instant Pot, with enough water to cover the beans by a centimeter, a pressure cooker program “quick soak” (two minutes at high pressure, and a manual release); and
top up the water to cover the beans, and 2-4 hours at slow cooker program, high. If I have time, I keep the beans simmering at slow cooker program medium (which is equivalent to traditional crock pot low) for 3-6 hours. The beans can be kept warm as slow cooker program low, or the warming program.
This works in a six quart Instant Pot with one or two cups of dry beans in the bottom of the Instant Pot in less than a quart of water.
The larger phaseolus varieties are not necessarily the hardest. This method worked with seda beans, with extra time, but the beans were old.
The book is Madhur Jaffrerey’s Instantly Indian Cookbook, was published in 2019 by the Borzoi imprint of Knopf and as an ebook in the Amazon Kindle store.
The error in the recipes for Plain Chickpeas at p. 20, Everyday Chickpeas at p. 22, and Chickpeas in Gingery Tomato Sauce at p. 24 is saying soaked (white) chickpeas can be done in an Instant Pot (or any electric pressure cooker/multicooker) in the pressure cooker program at three minutes on high pressure with a 3 minute natural cool down. In these recipes, the Instant Pot is used to sauté onions and make a sauce; uncooked soaked chickpeas are added. I was suspicious about 3 minutes. I set 6 minutes, but the result was crunchy and barely cooked. I put the lid on and cooked at high for another 8 minutes. This produced chickpeas with some texture, barely cooked.
The recipes are fine if the user has cooked chickpeas – either canned or cooked at home. Madhur Jaffrey used cooked chickpeas in several recipes in At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (2010) (in the UK, Easy Curry). She regarded canned chickpeas as acceptable but cautioned that the sauce or canning fluid was not good and should be rinsed off the chickpeas. except for some organic brands.
Dry chickpeas, even soaked, take more time. In an electric pressure cooker, Laura Pazzaglia’s Hip Pressure Cooking suggests
40 minutes on high for dry chickpeas and
20 minutes on high for chickpeas that have been soaked.
Madhur Jaffrey has a note at p. 20 of Madhur Jaffrerey’s Instantly Indian Cookbook that unsoaked chickpeas can be cooked in an Instant Pot set for 50 minutes of high pressure in the pressure cooking program.
In an Instant Pot, I would cook the legumes first, set them aside, wipe the pot, do the recipe as written and add the cooked chickpeas and give them the three minutes on high to cook some of the flavour into the cooked chickpeas.
