Baoding noodle sauce is known as one of the three treasures of Baoding, and noodle sauce is an indispensable condiment in people's daily life. In addition, it is also the condiment for marinating various side dishes. Baoding has so many sauce gardens that other cities cannot match. On North Avenue alone, there are five or six large sauce gardens (Yongyuan, Hengyuan, Demao, Decheng, Yonghe, Chen Mazi) and three or four small sauce gardens.
When I was young, I often went with my classmates to the Tangyuan Sauce Garden on the west side of The Middle Road of North Avenue to play hide and seek (as the saying goes, It is called the Old Man of The Hidden Gate). Although the sauce garden opened by the classmates and masters is not very famous in Baoding City, it is also a place for our friends to play. After entering the door, the face is greeted by a large vat full of pickles in the yard, which is half cut into the soil and half cut off on the ground, which is a good place for the friends to play hide and seek. A breeze blows, we smell the aroma overflowing, the smell of the courtyard flowing with wisps of sauce, unforgettable... When I grew up, I learned that the pickles in the jar were pickled side dishes.
Nowadays, the former site of The Tangyuan Sauce Circle on North Avenue has become a residential building in the third district of the Zhonghua Community. The largest Kuisheng Sauce Garden on East Avenue, a small building built by the Republic of China, still exists and is now leased to the Huajia Hotel.
Sauce as a seasoning, as early as the pre-Qin era. However, at that time, the sauce was not fermented from noodles. Instead, it is a paste-like salty and sour seasoning made from animal carcasses, including meat. It was not until the Western Han Dynasty that soybeans and flour were fermented and salted. Due to the low level of production in ancient times, ordinary people could not afford to eat. With the progress of the times, the material is greatly enriched, and the sauce has entered the people's table. Baoding sauce is made of flour, so it is called noodle sauce.
Baoding noodle sauce, known as sweet noodle sauce. Baoding's famous sauce gardens include Quanshunhe on South Avenue, Huaimao on West Avenue, and Kuisheng on East Avenue, all of which produce sweet noodle sauce.
How is the sweet noodle sauce produced? First of all, the green fish brand flour produced by Qianyi Flour Company is selected, that is, the first-class noodles, with an acre of spring well water and noodles (each sauce garden has a well, the well water is an acre of spring groundwater), steamed without fermentation, and then warmed by the sun on the day, after fermentation, it is stone ground, further processing, due to the use of Qianyi Flour Company's first-class flour, high gluten, wheat bran less, so it is bright red after fermentation. And autumn and winter can eat, the sauce is delicious.
There is also a sauce called aged old sauce, which the people call black sauce, or thick sauce, that is, the sauce produced by The North Street South Head Road West (its former site has now become a kindergarten), Decheng Sauce Garden.
The method is slightly different from the sweet sauce method: it is also made of green fish flour as raw material, and at first the noodles are mixed with water, and after its fermentation, they are steamed in the basket drawer, and then they are heated up by sunlight and then fermented, and then processed by electric milling (in the Republic of China, the tsuki family used electric mill processing). Make the two-fermented flour more delicate. After three volts of drying to become a product, after most of the water is evaporated, it can be pulled up with a spoon to pull up into filaments, and it is floating in the tank without flowing, and the surface of the sauce in the tank is like floating with a layer of black oil silk, red and yellow, so that the black sauce is ready.
Baoding sweet noodle sauce and black sauce sell well all over the place, and over time, Baoding noodle sauce is famous. In particular, sweet noodle sauce is an indispensable condiment in northern food. Ordinary people eat flapjack rolls with scallions and pancakes, and they all love to coat a layer of sweet sauce, eat fried sauce mixed noodles, and sweet sauce is the main raw material.
According to historical records, in the imperial kitchen of the former Qing Palace, the sauce elbows and sauce mutton that Empress Dowager Cixi loved to eat had to be made with Baoding's sweet sauce, and the empress dowager could distinguish between real and fake goods in the dishes, and the Guanglu Temple (the organ in charge of the imperial dining room) did not dare to be sloppy. There are also several big sauce gardens in Beijing, all of which ask the masters of Baoding Province to teach their crafts, these homes are also very famous, the quality is also high, we often eat, and we can't tell the difference between the high and low of their families.
In addition, the sauce is packed in a cloth bag and thrown into a large vat containing white radish, shredded carrots or strips, which is equivalent to marinating with sweet sauce, and after a few months, delicious sauce side dishes will come out, as well as sauce cucumbers and a series of sauce side dishes.
According to the current scientific folding, delicious and nutritious noodle sauce, containing the sweetness of sucrose and the aroma of sesame oil, rich in amino acids and other nutrients, in today's people's table, noodle sauce is still an indispensable condiment.
Author: Hao Qunfeng.
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