dimensional fishnet that not only entraps
pockets of water, but blocks the movements of
the whale-like, water-swollen starch granules.
Thinning: The Granules Break Once it
reaches its thickest consistency, the starch-
water mixture will slowly thin out again.
There are three different things that the cook
may do that encourage thinning: heating for a
long period of time after thickening occurs,
heating all the way to the boil, and vigorous
stirring. All of these have the same effect:
they shatter the swollen and fragile granules
into very small fragments. While this does
mean that even more amylose is released into
the water, it also means that there are many
fewer large bodies to get caught in the
amylose tangle. In other words, the amount of
netting increases, the mesh grows finer, but at
the same time the big whales become small
minnows. This thinning effect is especially
striking in the case of very thick pastes, less