Kneading dough may seem easy, but it does require some skill, a bit like practicing Taoism. It all starts with meditating on a cushion on the ground, which seems easy.
However, it is not easy to have some kind of epiphany.
Even though Su Qingluan taught her brother the secret of kneading dough without reservation, the control of strength could not be described in precise words - what's more, Su Qingluan was just an ordinary person with average expressive ability and had no extraordinary talent in language.
So after teaching for a long time, although Su Qingluan told him all the points that he should pay attention to, Su Xuanhe's posture still felt a little awkward.
For a moment, Su Qingluan seemed to have traveled back to her previous life and was tutoring a naughty kid with his homework: he knew every question, but he just couldn't answer them correctly.
Meanwhile, even with a low fire, the pot of water was already boiling. Fearing a waste of firewood, Su Qingluan pulled out the larger pieces that could still be pulled out, and used a "fire stick" to push the smaller or nearly burned pieces into the furnace. Once they burned, the job was done.
Anyway, warm water is added when kneading the dough, and it is not like making soup noodles - and judging from Su Xuanhe's current efficiency, it is hard to say how long he can finish.
But perhaps it is true that "hard work can make up for lack of talent". After repeated failures for half an hour, the dough in Su Xuanhe's hand was almost turned into plasticine, and it was obviously different in color from Su Qingluan's "dough". Finally, he found a trick to apply some force.
Once you start to figure out the trick of kneading dough, the rest of the things will be much easier. It’s just a matter of how to become more proficient in this “feeling”.
Fortunately, Su Xuanhe was not stupid and was willing to learn. He soon became more and more proficient and even knew how to use clever strength.
At this time, Su Qingluan looked at the sky outside. The sun had obviously set in the west - it was estimated that it would take at least half an hour just to knead the dough.
"Are your arms tired?" Su Qingluan looked at her brother with sweat on his forehead and a red face.
"My arms are a little sore." As he said that, Su Xuanhe twisted his neck back and forth and swung his arms a few times.
Su Qingluan thought to herself, how could it not be sore? She had been kneading the dough for more than half an hour, even with several breaks in between. The dough was only the size of a child's fist, so it was very tiring to do it for such a long time.
It was rare that Su Xuanhe was only seven years old, but he never complained about the hardship or tiredness. This made Su Qingluan realize that her younger brother was very patient and persevering.
Perhaps... my younger brother might have the opportunity to learn martial arts? This thought flashed through Su Qingluan's mind—of course, it was just an idea at this stage.
Not to mention that Su Qingluan had no idea where to find a reliable martial arts master, the saying "poor people learn literature, rich people learn martial arts" was a very difficult problem.
Although the Su family is not short of money, suitable venues and martial arts training equipment still cost money.
Especially the weapons, those plum blossom-shaped ones, long sticks and the like were fine, as long as they were made of wood, Su Guangfu could make them. But most of them were weapons that required forging fine iron.
The Su family now has enough money to forge three or five fine weapons, but it is very difficult to find a master who can forge weapons.
Putting aside the forging skills, the ice blade itself has a prescribed standard. If an amateur forges it randomly and breaks a taboo, he will be arrested and punished with silver and beating with a stick at the very least. In more serious cases, he may be beheaded and his family members may be implicated, depending on the severity of the suspected crime.
However, many craftsmen who forge daily knives, such as the blacksmith shop in Lefeng Town, do not know how to forge weapons at all. They are only able to forge pots, kitchen knives and the like.
In a sense, whether it is a good martial arts master or a weapon forging master, it is very difficult to find and it is a rare opportunity.
But her younger brother was only seven years old, so Su Qingluan was just thinking about it.
Gathering her chaotic thoughts, Su Qingluan turned to look at her brother: "When you're actually kneading the dough, it still needs to rise for a while, so you can mix the flour with water to form a dough. You don't need to knead it very smooth, you can rest it for about an hour."
"So long?" Su Xuanhe's eyes lit up, delighted. This was natural. Even though he was unyielding and a seven or eight-year-old boy was quite energetic, he had already been tossing and turning for over an hour without stopping.
After such a long time, even though Su Xuanhe was usually as playful as a monkey, he couldn't stand it anymore because of the pain in his hands.
Although this "flour pile" as high as a hill does look spectacular on the surface, perhaps because Su Xuanhe has been "tortured" by kneading dough for a long time, it doesn't matter to him whether it is more or less. Instead, he has a kind of calmness as if "after the storm, the sea is wide and the sky is vast".
This time he no longer dared to act on his own and pour all the water in at once. Instead, he dug a hole in the pile of mixed flour that looked like a small hill, like a sunken crater. He then slowly poured water into the hole from the "crater" until it reached almost two-thirds of the height. Then he slowly began to add flour from the "foot of the mountain" around it.
Originally, according to the plan, Su Xuanhe envisioned "slowly filling the hole with flour" and waiting for it to become a floc-like mass, and then he could slowly knead the dough.
I saw him adding flour while muttering "floccules, clumps" in his mouth, and he seemed to be adding flour slowly and methodically.
Seeing that everything was going according to plan, Su Qingluan felt that there was nothing else for her to worry about, so she turned around and planned to make some braised pork slices to eat - after all, tonight's pancakes were made with unleavened dough, and although they would not have that loose and porous structure, they could be layered to make a "roujiamo" (meat bun).
There is nothing better than this kind of pancake with fragrant braised meat slices in it.
It just so happened that when she bought the lamb ribs and lamb short ribs, she also bought two lamb legs. Last time, she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to finish it, so she left them outside. Now it was just the right time to braise them and they were delicious after being cut.
Thinking of this, Su Qingluan turned around and went to the shady place outside to get the mutton wrapped in oil paper. By the way, she went to the dry and loose soil pile in the backyard to dig a piece of ginger. Since the weather got colder, Su Qingluan buried the ginger in the dry soil. It can be preserved for a long time and will not go bad even throughout the winter.
...Of course, if it is really rotten, just sprinkle some water on it and move it into the house, and use it as a "seed" to grow new ones.
In just a moment of turning her head, less than a cup of tea, Su Qingluan heard her brother's scream in the kitchen as if his tail was burned.
Su Qingluan's heart tightened: Sure enough, the naughty kid got into trouble when he looked away even a little! She turned around and rushed into the kitchen in a hurry. Then she paused and was amused: she saw that the "volcano" that had been so tightly closed just now had inexplicably broken a hole halfway up the mountain. Warm water kept running out of it, flowing all over the panel.
Su Xuanhe, who had been very organized and calm just a moment ago, now seemed to have been electrocuted. He was waving his hands in a panic and using flour to block the water that was leaking out from all directions.
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