Traditional wood-fired string hopper (Idiyappam) steaming: bamboo basket press technique?

Crafting delicate String Hoppers (Idiyappam) from whole red raw rice flour (such as Pachchaperumal or Kuruluthuda) requires strict dough hydrometry. Rice flour is dry-roasted in pans, sifted, and kneaded with boiling salted water into a soft, non-sticky dough ball. The dough is loaded into a cylindrical brass or copper hand-press (Idiyappam Wangediya) and squeezed with a screw or lever plunger through a perforated fine die plate. Cooks extrude the nests in concentric circles onto small woven bamboo or plastic mesh mats (Vatti), stacking them into wood-fired aluminum or clay steamers to steam for 5 minutes.