Yesterday, the reporter visited the making method of bowl cakes on the spot, looking for simple rice flavor in childhood for readers.
There are cracks on the surface of steamed cakes.
There are cracks on the surface of steamed cakes.
The fermented thick rice slurry needs to be stirred before being poured into the mold.
The fermented thick rice slurry needs to be stirred before being poured into the mold.
The rice slurry should be fermented for 10 hour.
At 5: 30 in the morning, the reporter came to Master Xu's shop in Tianjiuwan Market. Because there are bowls and cakes to be sold for breakfast that day, Master Xu has to get up every morning 1. The raw material for making bowls and cakes is rice. In order to ensure that the taste of the finished product is moderate, early rice is generally used. Therefore, the alias of bowl cake is early rice cake.
Rice should be soaked in water for two hours to soften, and then ground into rice slurry by machine. When pulping, sugar is added, and the ratio is one catty of rice and four ounces of sugar. Ground rice slurry should not be used immediately. It should stand still 10 hour for natural fermentation, and the remaining old yeast can be added. If the cake is fermented for too long, it will be sour, tasteless and slag-dropping, so it should be neutralized with an appropriate amount of edible alkali. Finally, put the rice slurry into a container and steam it over high fire for 15 minutes.
The newly baked bowl cake is white in color and smells like rice. Because the expanded bowl cake will protrude from the surface of the container and split into several petals, like blooming flowers. Master Xu said that if the bowl cake is left to cool for a while, the taste will be more elastic and it will taste tender and sweet.
The flower shape implies a good omen.
Master Xu, 54, is from Lianxing Village, Yuetang Township, Xiuyu District. He has been making bowls and cakes for nearly 30 years. Master Xu cooks about 100 Jin of bowls and cakes every day. Besides retail, he also sells them to school canteens and breakfast stalls. Master Xu said that the early bowls and cakes were still made of teacups. Small 2.5 cents, now 1 yuan. In addition to teacups, Putian people later made bowls of cakes out of clay bowls filled with food, which is called crucible (gān) cakes in dialect. In the past, He moved to give this kind of crucible cake, which meant making a fortune and family prosperity, because "crucible" was homophonic with "family" in Putian dialect, and some places made it on the first15th day of the first month of Lantern Festival. It is understood that Putian Bowl Cake is used for the Dragon Boat Festival.
"To make a bowl cake, it must be fermented well, and the top surface of the bowl cake must be cracked into a smiling face." Master Xu said that people often say that bowls and cakes "smile" beautifully, which symbolizes that the home will be full of laughter. Master Xu recalled that when I was a child, my elders or relatives often made some bowls and cakes and distributed them to the children next door. Master Xu said that he had no apprentice, and it was his generation who made bowls and cakes.