Xu Fuji Li Xiangping: 23 years to taste 7 tons of crispy heart candy at a glance can identify different brands

Earlier this year, Hong Kong gourmand Cai Lan (third from left) visited Xu Fuji's crisp sugar production workshop, and Li Xiangping (fourth from left) introduced Cai Lan to the traditional hand-pulled sugar process of shortbread. Photo by Hu Guoqiu

Candy, which represents sweetness, is an indispensable snack for the family on weekdays, and it is also a gift for each other during the festive season. As the fist product of Xu Fuji candy, crisp heart candy produced more than 10,000 tons in 2015, and this year's target is nearly 20,000 tons. At present, the shortbread production workshop located in Dongguan Dongcheng has reached a daily output of 143 tons, and a steady stream of shortbread sugar enters thousands of households every day.

"The crispy candy on the market, I just have to smell it, look at the shape and texture, and I can identify which area of the brand." Since joining Xu Fuji in 1993, Li Xiangping, a native of Jiangxi, has been on the production line of crispy heart candy for 23 years. Every day at 10:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., he and his colleagues form a "sensory group" that tastes and checks the candy produced twice. He made a rough calculation, and in the past twenty years he had tasted as much as 7 tons of crisp sugar.

To learn to fry sesame seeds back to their hometown "steal the teacher"

It has been 23 years since I made crisp candy, which Li Xiangping never expected at the beginning of the work. The badge he wears on his chest clearly records the date he entered Xu Fuji's work, December 12, 1993.

"At that time, I was looking for a job at the old bus terminal in Dongguan for several days, and then I saw Xu Fuji recruiting operators." Li Xiangping said that before coming to Dongguan, he graduated from the secondary school of Jiangxi Ji'an Traffic School and worked in the Ji'an branch of Jiangxi Automobile Transport Corporation for 5 years. Due to the poor unit efficiency, he had the idea of going south to the world.

At that time, Xu Fuji established a factory in Dongguan not long ago, and just began to produce crisp candy, and the sesame raw materials were all procured and fried finished products. Due to the unstable market source, foreign substances such as sesame stalks often appear in raw materials, and the quality is different, Li Xiangping came up with the idea of frying raw materials by himself. He volunteered to return to his hometown in Jiangxi and learned the technique of roasting sesame seeds for a week in a well-known fried goods factory at that time. He told reporters that fried sesame seeds need to go through many processes such as washing, impurity removal, separation, baking, etc., and the most difficult to grasp is the heat and color when frying, which requires time and experience precipitation.

Initially, the production of shortbread was 3 tons per day, which was completely handmade, but after years of automation improvement, it has now reached 143 tons / day. From the initial front-line operators, to the current director of the production department. Li Xiangping proudly said that the production of shortbread last year has reached more than 10,000 tons, and this year's expected target is nearly 20,000 tons, which is Xu Fuji's most popular candy.

Workers "pull sugar" more than 1,600 times a day

The refined crisp sugar filling is fried, 2/3 is ground into powder, 1/3 is beaten into a pulp, and the boiled core material is filled at 80-90 ° C, and skilled workers need to manually stack the filling seven or eight times, and the 12 layers of sugar skin filling of a puff pastry are considered to be preliminary molding.

To master the skill of pulling sugar, an ordinary worker needs to go through more than 20 days of rigorous training under the leadership of the teacher to get on the production line. Workers on the production line need to repeatedly operate "pull sugar" more than 1600 times a day.

Although it is only a small piece of candy, the process is very complicated. To this day, the core process of crispy heart sugar, pull sugar, can only be completed by traditional manual techniques.

Li Xiangping said that the viscosity and temperature of raw materials are different, which requires skilled workers to judge the strength, time and effect of sugar pulling by experience, so as to ensure the fragrant, crisp, crisp and loose of shortbread. If you use machine production, it is easy to tear the sugar crust, the tissue of the product is hard, and you can't eat the crispy feeling of the puff pastry.

It is reasonable to say that as long as the strict process is followed, the same product can be produced, but this is not the case, because the "personality" of the raw material will also affect the taste and flavor of the product.

Try the puff pastry every day

Every morning at 10:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., a "sensory group" of Li Xiangping and colleagues will try on the products produced the day before. "If the peanut flavor of the product is particularly strong, then the measurement of the mixed raw materials should be adjusted appropriately, and if the product is too sweet, the syrup measurement verification of the formula should be carried out." Li Xiangping said that these are all to ensure the quality of crispy heart sugar.

Li Xiangping calculated that the crispy heart sugar he had tried in the past 23 years added up to nearly 7 tons. Will eating so much sugar make the body fat and have a detrimental effect on the body? Li Xiangping, who was very thin in appearance, answered no.

How he did it, it turned out that he had his own secrets: one is to eat lightly, do not smoke and drink; the other is to drink tea every day, and it is strong tea, relying on drinking strong tea to "dissolve sugar".

Li Xiangping said that he now looks at the appearance, shape and texture of sugar on the market, smells the taste, and can judge the production area of shortbread, "This is not a joke, because the recipe of each sugar is different, there are their own unique genes, such as some places where the shortbread likes to have bitter buckwheat ingredients, and some places like to add coarse grain ingredients." Li Xiangping said that he will often participate in sugar and wine parties and exchange meetings across the country to understand the latest tastes and trends of shortbread, "so that he can also have a good idea of the product."

Make sugar that consumers are satisfied with

Due to its popularity in the market, the production of shortbread has doubled, and the size of the production line has also expanded.

Li Xiangping told reporters that for more than 20 years, the production line of Xu Fuji crisp candy has undergone several transformations and upgrades.

In 2007, the production line at that time could only produce 68-70 tons of sugar per day. How to implement breakthroughs to meet market demand? According to the company's development strategy, Li Xiangping and colleagues conducted research, internal improvements to the existing production lines, adjustment of accessories, and optimization of the transmission parts of the equipment structure. This alone increases production by 20 tons a day. By 2008, the factory added two more production lines, increasing production to 120 tons per day.

The road of more than 20 years of crispy candy has not been smooth for Li Xiangping. With the improvement of people's living standards, everyone has higher health requirements for food. To this end, Li Xiangping led the team to try to add five grains of healthy raw materials. However, the shortbread that had just been added to the multigrains was not recognized by the market, resulting in a backlog of stocks, which had never been the case before.

Subsequently, Li Xiangping and the team reflected. He told reporters that from the research point of view, the taste of mainland consumers is sweet, and some grain ingredients are not highly accepted at that time. Subsequently, the R&D team further subdivided the consumer group, gradually increasing the original 4 flavors to 8, and the market rebounded, reaching more than 20,000 tons in 2013.

"Seeing the popularity of the product is the most satisfying thing for me." Li Xiangping said that in recent years, with the rise of green and healthy food, he has been in constant communication with the R & D team, suggesting the development of some healthy products, and reducing the overall sweetness of shortbread. He said that he usually drills into the candy area of a large supermarket on weekends to understand consumer preferences.