Stone cake
Small stones "cook" out of the nutritious cuisine
Reporter Xue Lijuan
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Driving through DaiXian County, you can see the streets and alleys, and there are small shops selling stone cakes. The reporter and his party walked into the popular "Wuji Stone Cake" at the intersection of The Purple Mountain in Daixian County, and it is said that his family's stone cakes are quite praised in both appearance and taste.
Wu Taifeng and Wu Ling are the owners of this small shop. "Wu Ji Stone Cake", not only is the portion sufficient, the east and west are authentic, the real materials are real, but also clean and hygienic, and are deeply loved by the locals. Every day at three o'clock in the morning, they began to prepare for the day's stone cakes, making noodles, ingredients, making fires, frying stones... Because at dawn, someone would come to the store and pick up two or three stone cakes and go to work. Also because of the delicious, nutritious, easy to digest and durable characteristics of stone cakes, many people will buy a few boxes for friends and family. Save some at home, when you want to eat, come to one, nourish your stomach and relieve your hunger.
Unique "pebbles"
Stone cake, as the name suggests, is related to stone. The cooking method mainly uses the characteristics of slow heat transfer, slow heat dissipation and relatively uniform heat distribution of stones, so as to achieve the purpose of controlling the heat. To make it, the stones are heated and then the dough is placed directly on the stone and baked.
Stone cake is a very old flavor snack in Hedong, because it inherits ancient cooking technology, has a deep and long folk tradition, and is known as "the first cake in ancient China". The appearance of the stone cake is round, the color is scorched yellow, the surface is uneven, unique, the bite is clearly layered, the outside is crisp and soft, the salty and delicious, very famous.
In the past, in the countryside of Daixian County, near the Mid-Autumn Festival, as long as you go to the alley, you can hear more than one sound of "rushing, cheering". At that time, there were not many iron hammers for making stone cakes, so most of them were shared by several families. Since it is a special offering for the moon worship on August 15, everyone has to bake stone cakes, and the scene is very lively. At that time, each family had to bake a lot, in addition to being used as a gift for visiting relatives and friends, the rest was packed in sacks and put in a place where children could not easily find, which could be stored for a long time. Moreover, the dried stone cake is crispy and crispy to eat, and the more you eat it, the more fragrant it becomes.
Whether the stone cake is delicious or not, the most important thing is the choice of stones, which must be pebbles in the river. Surrounded by mountains, there are Shuishui River, Heihe River, Xuluyu River, Lizhiyu River, etc., these flowing rivers create hard and smooth river pebbles, which are rich in essential trace elements: calcium, iron, zinc, selenium. Through heating, the bread not only absorbs its heat, but also absorbs some trace elements, long-term consumption can nourish the stomach and beauty, longevity and longevity.
Exquisite craftsmanship
1. And noodles: put wheat flour in the pot, add an appropriate amount of yeast powder, beat two eggs, pour in the cool cooked oil, add warm water and stir well, knead into a smoother dough. At this step, the ratio of eggs to oil is the key, and the proportion is appropriate to be crisp and fragrant.
2. Dough: Put the kneaded dough into a basin and ferment it to 2 to 2.5 times the original size, which takes about an hour or two. Then wake up the dough, and wake up the dough to be soft.
3. Mixing filling: In the process of making and waking up the noodles, you can prepare the filling of the stone cake. The five-spice filling is mainly fennel powder, sesame seeds, oil, salt, and mixed according to your own taste. You can also add brown sugar sesame filling and bean paste filling according to personal preference.
4. Make a cake: Turn the awakened noodles into small doses. Roll the small potion round and flatten it, spread the mixture on top or wrap it inside, and pinch the mouth tightly like a bun to form a round ball. Roll out a dough pin to form a round cake, or you can press it into a small pie depending on the size.
5. Stir-frying stones: Spread the river pebbles flat into the furnace, and the heating of the stones is a slow process, which takes about forty minutes. Turn the stone with a small shovel to heat the stone evenly.
6. Shoveling stones: When the stones are heated to a certain temperature, shovel out the upper layer of hot stones, put them in the basins on both sides for later use, and then bulldoze the remaining stones.
7. Put the cakes: Roll out the stone cakes one by one and place them on the stones. Depending on the size of the iron hammer and the size of the cake, the number of cakes that can be put in at one time varies.
8. Pour the stones: Pour the stones in the basin that have been shoveled out in advance and pour them evenly on the stone cake. Make sure the dough is buried in the stone, cover the stove and wait 5 to 6 minutes.
9. Baking: Open the lid and use a shovel to turn out the stone cake. Steaming, browned and fragrant stone cakes are baked.
Legendary history
The earliest stone cakes in the Hedong region can be traced back to the Paleolithic Period. At that time, the ancestors of mankind living in the Yellow River Basin in southern Jinnan had learned to use fire and entered the era of eating cooked food, and the earliest cooking technique was "stone cooking". It is said that the inventor of the stone cake was Emperor Yao. A bumper harvest of new wheat in the year, heavy rains caused the granary to collapse and the grains of wheat were crushed into powder. After the rain, when it was sunny, people were reluctant to throw away the crushed wheat, so they spread the wheat on the stone slabs to dry and prepare for collection, but they smelled a strange fragrance. Therefore, Emperor Yao taught the people to crush the wheat with stone plates and stone sticks, burn the flour cakes, celebrate the harvest of grain, and pray for the prosperity of future generations. Because of the Yao Emperor, the folk also called the stone cake "Yao Wang Cake" or "The First Cake of China".
Nowadays, after the wheat harvest in Hedong, every household will still bake stone cakes, take it to relatives and friends, celebrate the harvest, and whoever has a daughter-in-law has a child, the mother's family will bake stone cakes to visit to show congratulations.
In the Neolithic Age, primitive agriculture was initially formed, and the ancestors used thin stone chips to grind into stone hammers, placed millet on it, and heated and roasted. This ancient stone cooking technique spanned the pottery and bronze age and entered the iron age. In 403 BC, the three families of Han Zhao and Wei were divided into Jin, and the earliest three-legged iron chain made of pottery (excavated in Wanrong County) appeared in the State of Wei. By the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, with the widespread popularization and development of iron tools, iron hammers gradually replaced stone chains, forming a method of putting river beach stones on flat-bottomed iron chains to bake cakes. In 113 BC, Emperor Wudi of han toured Hedong, Houtu, and feasted on the boat of the Fenhe River, and the locals made stone cakes and gave them to Emperor Wudi of Han and hundreds of officials to eat. By the Tang Dynasty, stone cakes were also called stone steamed buns as royal tributes. In the Ming Dynasty, because the stone cake had a bump scar, people also called it "scar cake". In the Qing Dynasty, stone cakes had a professional workshop operation and spread in the north and south of the river.
Nowadays, the materials and production of stone cakes are more exquisite and hygienic, and in addition to Daixian County, stone cakes in other areas of Yuncheng are also unique. Due to people's different tastes, there are nuances in various areas of Hedong, such as Hejin, Wanrong, Ruicheng area to take more pepper leaves and sesame seeds into the cake noodles, fragrant and crispy; Daixian adds a variety of fillings, sweet and salty crispy; Yongji for river stone for river sand, the cake made is even more delicious.
Photo by Wei Xingzhi Chen Jianguo Xue Lijuan