Chapter 342 Making Leavened Dough (Please vote and subscribe)

It is best to dry the wheat repeatedly for several days to make the seeds completely dry. First, it is to reduce the moisture content, which is convenient for storage and avoids mold in the warehouse. At the same time, it is also to ripen those unripe seeds. In addition, there is another important thing to pay attention to when drying wheat, that is, you must find a few children to watch the wheat and don't let the birds come to steal it (￣▽￣)". After

three days of repeated drying, the three kinds of wheat grains were also dried very dry. Now it is mid-summer, the weather is very hot, and there has been no rain in the past few days, so the grains dry very quickly.

All the preparations have been completed, and it is time to start experiments to distinguish barley from wheat. Luo Chong asked people to take three pounds of each kind of wheat, mark them and distinguish them, and then send them to the mill to grind them into flour.

Although the Han tribe does not have a mill specifically for grinding wheat at present, it has built an oil mill with a windmill. When the oil mill is pressing oil, it is also necessary to grind the raw materials into powder first, and then fry them in a large pot before it can be used to press oil. But it's no problem to use it to grind wheat temporarily.

The three kinds of wheat were given to the oil mill to grind flour, and Luo Chong went to prepare things that could ferment the flour. Of course, there was no yeast powder, but the world's first leavened dough could not be made with yeast powder. There are two theories about the origin of leavened dough.

The first legend is that around 2600 BC, there was an Egyptian slave who made pancakes for his master with honey water and flour. One night, he fell asleep before the pancakes were baked, and the stove went out. At night, the raw dough began to ferment and swell. When the slave woke up, the raw dough was twice as big as the night before. He quickly stuffed the dough back into the stove, thinking that no one would know that he was lazy and fell asleep before finishing the work.

In this way, the world's first leavened bread was baked. The slave thought that this piece of broken bread would have some unexpected situation, but it turned out to be abnormal. This leavened bread was baked loose and soft, and it was unusually delicious. It was much softer than the usual pancakes made with dead dough, and it was also relatively large. With the same weight of flour, the volume of dough can be increased several times by making food made of leavened dough. Gradually, this kind of food made of baked leavened dough became popular and was finally named bread.

As for why raw dough ferments and expands, it may be that the flour, water or honey in the raw dough is exposed to wild yeast or bacteria in the air. After a period of warmth, the yeast grows and spreads throughout the dough. Of

course, this natural fermentation also has prerequisites. It is impossible for any piece of raw dough to be infected and fermented by bacteria when placed there. There is a very important factor here, that is, adding honey, of course, it can also be something else, as long as it is sweet, because flour fermentation requires sugar very much. If the dough is not added with sugar, it will only grow hair and become sour when placed in a warm place, and it will not produce gas expansion at all.

The origin of the second kind of leavened dough is in China. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhuge Liang captured Meng Huo seven times and pacified the southern barbarians. After crossing the river, he was blocked by the dead souls. Zhuge Liang was anxious in the face of this scene. After thinking about it, he had to hold a memorial ceremony. Zhuge Liang could not bear to use human heads for sacrifice, so he invented steamed buns as a substitute.

The truth of this story is unknown, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a novel. In addition, the text does not mention the process of making dough, but only says that Zhuge Liang made steamed buns. Oh, by the way, the steamed buns at that time were actually dumplings, which were stuffed with meat.

Two sources, two stories, but what Luo Chong needs most now is actually just a spoonful of sugar. At the market last autumn, Luo Chong bought some from other departments. Luo Chong had bought wild honey, but that little bit had been divided up long ago. When he first got it, Luo Chong gave it as a reward to those meritorious people in the Han tribe or those who worked hard.

But it didn't matter. There was another source of natural sugar, which was the thorny man-eating tree in the valley behind the mountain north of Hanyang City. The root nodules of the man-eating tree contained natural syrup, which was the bait it used to lure prey into its trap. But in Luo Chong's view, it was just a sugar jar in his backyard.

By the time Luo Chong sent someone to the back mountain to collect the syrup nodules, the flour ground by the oil mill had already been prepared. It was Xiaodie who brought the flour back, and she took it directly to Luo Chong's home.

"Husband, why does this wheat have to be ground into flour? Can't it be cooked like rice? It feels so troublesome to grind it into flour, and it grows very slowly, one and a half months slower than rice. Why do we grow this kind of food?" Xiaodie put three basins of flour on the table in the main room and asked Luo Chong puzzledly.

"You don't understand this, right? The biggest advantage of wheat is that it uses less water and doesn't need to be planted in paddy fields. Although it grows slower, it can be planted in places with less water. This alone is worth our effort to promote." As

Luo Chong spoke, he began to get busy, placing three pottery basins with different Chinese characters inscribed on them in order, and then began to add water and knead the flour. Xiaodie helped on the side, nodding from time to time, and listened carefully to Luo Chong's explanation.

"In addition, wheat can be grown on dry land and grows slowly, but it is very delicious, especially when it is ground into flour, it can be turned into countless kinds of food, unlike rice, which can only be used to cook porridge or steam rice." Luo Chong continued to knead the dough.

"Really? You always say that wheat is very delicious and can be used to make so many good things. Then you have to teach me how to make it in the future, and I will make it for you every day." Xiaodie helped Luo Chong pour the water, and also picked up another basin to learn how to knead the dough from Luo Chong.

"Don't worry, as long as it succeeds this time, we will start to plant wheat on a large scale, so that when this winter comes, we can eat the food made from it every day."

Luo Chong kneaded the dough while mixing the syrup of the man-eating tree into it, and then slowly kneaded the syrup evenly so that it could fully penetrate every part of the dough. After all three doughs were mixed with syrup and kneaded evenly, they had to prepare a warm place for fermentation.

It is midsummer now, and the natural temperature outside is more than 30 degrees, and the temperature is balanced. It only takes a few hours for the dough to ferment, and it can be fermented in half a day at most, so it is no problem to rely on the natural temperature.

However, to be on the safe side, Luo Chong also specially covered all three pottery basins with animal skins, which could not only prevent the direct sunlight from drying out and hardening the dough, but also increase the temperature of the three pottery basins.

(End of this chapter)