Eating bean foam candy, thoughts drift away.
The sweetness of Yunnan snacks is like the climate of the four seasons, just like the blue in the sky, which is charming. Flower cake is the favorite of young people, but for the elderly, in their memory, yunnan is the sweetest is bean foam candy. Although bean foam candy is a specialty of Tonghai, a small and medium-sized county town in Yunnan, it has traveled all over the world with the footsteps of the sons and daughters of Yunnan.
△ Bean foam candy
The history of bean foam candy
Speaking of bean foam candy, everyone is familiar with the crispy and crunchy taste and simple outer packaging, and the unfamiliar is its origin.
According to legend, the brave and fierce Mongolian iron horse could not carry too much food in the long-term conquest and long-range raid, so he had to fry barley, soybeans, etc., grind it into noodles, and then put it in a dry food bag with moist brown sugar. After a long run on horseback, the fried noodles wrapped the brown sugar layer by layer to form a lump, which is the prototype of the bean foam candy. In 1252 AD, Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, led his troops to march south, and the Tun army ruled southern Xinjiang at Qutuoguan, and this sugar flowed into the tonghai, a simple snack that was gradually imitated by other local ethnic groups, and everyone was willing to use it as dry food for hunger after going up the mountains and going down the water. Its production process is passed down from generation to generation by local masters and improved. In this way, in the process of passing on, people continued to process and improve, and finally became a delicious snack, which was named "bean foam sugar". In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, bean foam candy was mass-produced in Kowloon (formerly Kowloon Town, Hexi County) and became famous for a while. Today, it has been more than 750 years.
Three generations of time-honored brands
Soybean foam sugar has the characteristics of thin as paper and white as milk. No residue in the mouth, sweet but not greasy, crispy and crispy.
In order to explore the secret of bean foam candy, I went deep into the Tonghai Bean Foam Pastry Factory. In the factory, not only did they learn more about the production process of bean foam candy, but also felt sincere admiration for this group of craftsmen who adhered to the traditional method of making.
Walking along the cement village road of Majiezi Village, a simple large iron gate hung with the words "Tonghai County Bean Foam Pastry Factory in Yunnan Province", a young man has already stood at the door to greet us, he is now in charge of the tonghai bean foam cake factory of the third generation of heirs Xu Chuanzhen - a young and promising young entrepreneur.
According to Xu Chuanzhen's recollection, Tonghai Bean Foam Sugar Pastry Factory has gone through more than half a century of glorious years. Before the founding of New China, his grandfather Xu Xuezhen was a famous sugar master in Tonghai. In 1956, in response to the state's socialist transformation of "agriculture, handicrafts, capitalist industry and commerce", Xu Xuezhen resolutely cooperated with several small workshops that produced and sold bean foam sugar to establish the state-owned Tonghai Bean Foam Pastry Factory, which was one of the shareholders, and diligently went deep into the factory building to eat and live with the workers, laying a solid foundation for today's situation. When the spring breeze of reform and opening up blew the motherland, Xu Chuanzhen's father, Licensed, resolutely took over the banner of his father's generation, starting from a sugar worker, and gradually growing from an ordinary worker to a supervisor, deputy factory director, and finally became a factory director. Under the meticulous management of the second-generation head Xu You, the Xiushan brand bean foam candy produced by Tonghai Bean Foam Pastry Factory won the excellent product of the commercial system in Yuxi District in 1986, to the silver medal of the China Expo in 1989, and then to the bronze medal in the "Forty Years of Chinese Women's and Children's Products" Expo jointly organized by the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Agriculture and other departments in 1990... Behind this yellowed award certificate, countless honors is not to state the classic inheritance of nearly 100 sugar technicians in that era.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Xiushan brand bean foam candy was given as a small gift by civil aviation Kunming flights to every guest who took the plane, going out of the local area, facing inside and outside the province, and even facing domestic and foreign countries. Even the "Yunnan Specialty Flavor Guide" published in the 1990s also gave a detailed introduction to the Xiushan brand bean foam candy.
Nowadays, there are 20 or 30 small workshops making bean foam candy in Tonghai County, of which three have formed a scale, and the Tonghai County Bean Foam Pastry Factory is one of them. Compared with other fancy and exquisite packaging, Tonghai County Bean Foam Sugar Pastry Factory still continues the simple carton packaging. According to Xu Chuanzhen, it is not that they do not want to change, but compared with those mechanized industrial products, the people of Tonghai and Yuxi are more willing to accept the old packaging that is cheap and good, and the memory of the times is engraved.
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See traditional craftsmanship
Walking in the factory area surrounded by green trees, the bluestone slab paths, the simple mud tile houses on both sides, the mottled and peeling yellow paint, and the large iron pots with holes and rust under the eaves, as if they were all telling the story of their exploits for the old state-owned factory.
After walking through these old buildings and walking under the wall at the foot of the last hill of the factory area, I saw a two-story cement building. Xu Chuanzhen said that because most of the old factories built in the 1970s were already dilapidated, the cement factory in front of him was built in the 1990s. Xu Chuanzhen told me as he walked that the bean foam sugar from raw materials to finished products generally goes through the following steps: the selection of materials→ abrasives→ baking→ sieving→ boiling sugar → cooling→ pulling sugar→ wrapping bean noodles→ pulling sugar → cutting → packaging.
After entering through the small door, after strict washing and disinfection, we came to the core production area, in the key step of bean foam sugar production - boiling sugar area, I saw a large iron pot on a large cement stove, burning blue flames below, the big pot grunted hot, and the wall behind the pot had long been yellowed by fireworks, the yellow wall also reflected the long time of the factory, and the rustic, natural and cumbersome traditional craftsmanship, and in the corner of the stove was placed a small enamel basin and a stainless steel basin.
Only to see the sugar master first add water to the cauldron, and then pour in the proportion of sugar, melt and then scoop some malt syrup from the large basin into it, use the spatula to continuously stir the sugar liquid, wait until the sugar liquid churns out a dense bubble, and will be spilled out of the pot, the master skillfully scooped out some brown-red liquid from the small pot of enamel into the pot, and then the bubbles in the pot seem to become quiet and neat in an instant, just tumbling in the pot, and disappeared before the call to come out. Xu Chuanzhen seemed to see my doubts, smiled and said: "The small pot of enamel is filled with cooked rapeseed oil, and adding it when the sugar liquid is tumbled will eliminate some of the bubbles in the sugar liquid, so that the sugar liquid will not spread out of the pot." "I also noticed a detail, after the sugar liquid was tumbled, the master also took a brush at any time to dip some water and swept it along the side of the pot in a circle, which I understood, in order to prevent the caramelization reaction of the sugar liquid scorch.
Two rectangular iron cooling plates were placed on the right side of the stove, and the sugar master picked up the brush with his hands and feet and dipped some cooked rapeseed oil, and spread it evenly on the iron plate, even on the corners. When the sugar liquid is boiled, the master puts on anti-scalding gloves, grasps the edge of the pot with both hands, lifts the cauldron, and instantly pours the hot sugar liquid into the cooling dish, while also shoveling the sugar liquid in the pot with a shovel. After the sugar liquid is slightly cooled, the master uses a shovel to stir the sugar liquid repeatedly, and while dissipating heat, the rapeseed oil stuck to the bottom is mixed with the sugar liquid. When the sugar liquid becomes viscous, the sugar liquid is shoveled into the iron plate containing cooked bean foam next to the cooling table, and then repeatedly stirred and patted until the sugar liquid is further cooled to the point of not being hot, and then placed on the iron pipe of the sugar puller, start the machine, let the three iron pipes pull alternately in a counterclockwise direction, until the sugar liquid is milky white, you can remove it and carry out the next link - wrapping the bean noodles.
There is a large oven behind the stove against the wall, and another chef can pour the pre-broken bean noodles into the baking pan at any time, send them into the oven to bake to maturity, and turn it by hand from time to time to avoid uneven baking and causing scorching. The sugar master sifts the cooked bean noodles in the baking tray through a fine sieve, stacks them on the board, and then puts the milky white sugar blanks in the bean noodles, and then makes them according to the method of opening the puff pastry in the dim sum. That is, the soft sugar blank is first flattened, then the cooked bean noodles are evenly smeared, and the two ends are folded to the middle, and then flattened, continue to spread the bean noodles, folded again, and so on three or four times, the sugar blanks are arranged into a large and small water droplet shape, and buried in the cooked bean noodle pile. Then the master skillfully started from the thin end, pulled the sugar blank into a long strip about 2 centimeters in diameter and about 120 centimeters long, and then cut it from the tail. After repeating this many times, seven or eight sugar strips were placed on the board, and the sugar cutter next to him would drag the sugar strips over, pick up the sharp sugar cutting knife, press the back of the knife with one hand, press the handle of the knife with the other hand, and cut the long strips into short strips of four or five centimeters while the sugar strips were not completely cold and soft, that is, the bean foam candy we usually eat.
△ Bagging method
△ Boxed method
In terms of packaging, the method of bagging is different from that of boxing. The bag is arranged by hand, put into the bag to tidy up, and then the bag mouth is bundled with a rubber band. The box is to use a small sugar spatula of 8 to 10 cm wide to shovel the bean foam sugar into the bag, pour the appropriate amount of short strips according to the capacity of the box, and then seal the mouth of the bag and weigh, and finally cover the box lid with plastic sealing.
All we saw during the tour was the traditional soybean sesame flavored bean foam candy, and the times are changing, and the bean foam candy is also improving. In addition to traditional tastes, there are also innovative flavors such as flower series and chocolate series, but they are all a continuation of tradition.
Soybean sesame bean foam sugar production process
Raw materials (see Figure 1): 5000 grams of sugar, 2000 grams of maltose syrup, 500 grams of cooked white sesame seeds, 1000 grams of soybeans, 500 grams of broad beans, cooked rapeseed oil, water each appropriate amount
Method:
1. Cooked bean noodles: Mix the soybeans with broad beans evenly, beat into a thin dough, and send them to the oven to bake at 120 ° C to mature (see Figure 2).
2. Boil sugar: mix water in a net pot, pour in sugar, simmer over low heat, then add malt syrup to boil, pour a little cooked rapeseed oil and stir well to prevent spillage. In addition, it is necessary to use a brush to dip some water and sweep it continuously along the edge of the pot to prevent caramelization (see Figures 3-5).
3. Cooling: Brush a little cooked rapeseed oil into the cooling dish to prevent sticking to the dish, then pour in the boiled sugar solution and stir it slightly cold (see Figures 6-8).
4. Sugar pulling: Mix the slightly cold syrup with the cooked bean noodles and pull it into a milky white sugar blank on the sugar pulling machine (see Figures 9 and 10).
5. Bean noodles: After the bean noodles are sieved, the sugar blanks are glued to the bean noodles and cooked white sesame seeds and folded repeatedly, and pressed into a large and small water droplet shape, and buried in the bean noodles (see Figures 11~13).
6. Pull strip cutting: along the thin end of the sugar blank pulled into about 120 cm long strip, with a knife in the tail cut, so repeated several times, that is, more sugar strips, cut into short strips, packaging molding can be (see Figure 14 ~ 16).
Zhang Dong/Wen Zhang Dong, Yang Yaling/Figure Hana/Choreographer