Tips for good Chinese pastry

(a) common types of roasters

1. The hot air type

The hot air type bean dryer uses a

Have always felt that all points in the heart, Chinese style pastry Is an attractive, layered crisp skin, bite crisp fall Tony ~ with the love of pastry, I try to make a few times, the first production is in the process of the second sum up experience, again, was a success.

There are a few elements that I think are essential in the process: lard, medium gluten flour, kneading.

1. Lard:

I think in Chinese meringue point, lard is the key to open a cake, now there are a lot of people think that fat calories, fat content is high, so in butter instead of lard cake, said more friends, my family no butter and do not eat lard, use vegetable oil to a crisp, well, I can say is responsible, lard is open in the three oil cake effect is better, and/or rich; Butter is slightly less effective, and if you're going to use vegetable oil, well, good luck

Why is that?

Because lard is a saturated high fatty acid triglyceride, the molecule does not contain carbon carbon double bond, so can not make bromine water fade, can not make acid potassium permanganate solution fade. Lard belongs to the "fat" in the fat, at room temperature for the white or light yellow solid.

Butter, on the other hand, is made from milk, the product of fresh milk, which has been stirred and then drained of some of the moisture from the top thickening.

Vegetable oil is a compound of unsaturated fatty acids and glycerol, widely distributed in nature, from the fruit, seed, germ of plants to get oil. Such as peanut oil, soybean oil, linseed oil, castor oil, rapeseed oil and so on. The main components of vegetable oil are the esters of high fatty acids and glycerol. In addition to palmitic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid, fatty acids also contain a variety of unsaturated acids, such as erucic acid, tongoleic acid, ricinoleic acid and so on.

Because of the different characteristics of these three oils, lard has the best opening effect in Chinese pastry, followed by butter. Vegetable oil is not recommended.

Family cooking yellow oil, generally put some salt and star anise to extend the preservation time of lard, but the production of Chinese dim sum lard remember not to add the two, because the addition of the two, especially star anise will be lard smell a "strange" taste, must be avoided in baking.

Two, flour:

All-purpose flour is called all-purpose flour. Most Chinese dim sum is made from gluten flour. The average protein content is about 11%, and the gluten powder is often used in the production of Chinese dim sum, such as steamed buns, steamed buns, dumplings, etc.

Strong flour refers to flour with an average protein content of 13.5% or more. It is usually called strong flour with a protein content of 11.5% or more. Strong flour is dark in color, active and smooth in itself, and not easily clumped by hand; Because of its high protein content, it is often used to make bread and noodles with elasticity and chewiness.

Low gluten flour is short for cake flour, also called cake flour, Japanese called thin powder. Low gluten flour refers to flour with less than 13.8 percent water content and 8.5 percent crude protein. It is used to make cakes, cookies, pastries, and pastry. Make sponge cake choose low gluten powder, because low gluten powder has no strength, the cake made of special soft, expanded volume, flat surface.

The reason why flour is divided into three kinds of high, medium and low gluten block is according to its protein content to distinguish, and in the production of Chinese dim sum, the most used is gluten flour, that is, we use more flour in our daily life, general supermarkets and grain stores can buy.

Three, kneading dough:

Because of the first failure experience, so summed up the experience, referring to a lot of prescriptions, found that they have another common place, is "knead the dough of water and oil skin until it can be pulled out a large smooth film". I believe that many people are not unfamiliar, because in the production of bread, especially in the production of toast, the dough is needed to fully expand the stage, which is commonly known as the glove film. So why do you need to knead a simple pastry until you can pull out a thin film? Actually, I've been thinking about this question before, know after summing up experience and lessons for the second time make success, I didn't realize, because after knead the dough until completely development stage, the toughness of the dough is very good, and in a package stuffing with good flexibility of the dough is not easy to break, also won't "discover".

blower to draw in air and then let the air pass through a heating coil to raise its temperature. The hot air is used as a heating source to roast the coffee beans. The hot air can not only provide the temperature needed for roasting, but also use the power of the air to stir the beans, killing two birds with one stone.

Advantages: High thermal efficiency, fast heating, raw bean heating is more uniform, easy to control.

Disadvantages: Because of the high heating efficiency, it is easy to lead to too fast heating, resulting in beans "sandwich", and the temperature is too high to make the caramelization reaction is not sufficient.

Flavor characteristics: The acidity is obvious, the flavor is clean and simple, but the flavor is not rich and lack of depth, and the deep baking is easy to produce pungent taste.

2, direct fire

As the name suggests, a direct fire uses a flame to heat coffee beans directly. Evolution up to now, direct fire "fire" in addition to the general flame (including gas fire and charcoal fire), but also including infrared and electric heat pipe.

Pros: Longer baking time, full caramelization, rich flavor,

Disadvantages: easy to cause uneven roasting, if the temperature is not well controlled, it is easy to burn the coffee beans, forming a scorched bitterness.

3. Semi-straight fire and semi-hot air

The baking method combining the advantages of direct fire and hot air is the mainstream of commercial baking machines at present. Semi-straight roasting is similar to straight roasting, but because there are no holes in the outer walls of the roasting container, the flame does not directly touch the beans; Besides plus the convulsions of the equipment, hot air outside baking container import baking efficiency of ascension in the baking chamber into the ventilation equipment another function is will fall off the silver leather (outer membrane attached to the coffee seeds) absorption, avoid silver leather in the baking room because of the high temperature burning, which influence the flavor of the coffee beans.

Semi-direct fire semi-hot air machine has the advantages and disadvantages of both direct fire and hot air, but the heating mode is changed according to the regulation of hot air and boiler speed. The more hot air is opened, the faster the speed is close to hot air; On the contrary, the closer to direct fire.