Chapter 279: Toast Into The Roaster
After confirming the status of the six doughs, Xiang Chuan decisively chose to proceed to the next step—first fermentation!
When the five people learned that after waiting half an hour, they still had to wait two hours, their eyes widened as big as copper bells.
Xiang Chuan sneered.
“Do you think making bread is simple? Bread and cake both have thousands of years of history like steamed buns and buns, so the derived manufacturing methods are incredibly varied. And this is only the first fermentation; after shaping and putting into molds later, there’s still another fermentation.”
Ouyang Yating and the others looked at each other.
Ancient people… really knew how to go to great lengths. Modern youth with their impoverished food culture sighed inwardly.
——
After all this back-and-forth fussing, before the first fermentation even ended, they now had to go eat lunch.
The dining table in the Xiang Family dining hall wasn’t small, but Class Eight Grade One’s thirty-five people were still a bit too many, so Class President Lu Daiqing directly decided—let’s just eat in the courtyard!
The courtyard was not only spacious, but also had special shaded glass and air conditioner, making it indeed suitable for more than thirty people to dine together.
However, although the dining location was decided quickly, choosing the menu really stumped Class Eight Grade One’s crowd.
Mainly because the Xiang Family home’s recipe could be called the richest ancient cuisine menu in the entire fleet right now, and since quite a few big shots had been coming to the Xiang Family to “mooch meals” these past few months for ancient gourmet food, agriculture, history, and various other aspects, Xiang Weiguo even had Da Xing help reformat and categorize the recipe in the style of Yue Xiang Restaurant, making it convenient to read and, with the addition of images and videos, incredibly appetizing.
Since they were already here, they had to pick some gourmet food that they couldn’t eat normally and that seemed to have plentiful ingredient stocks!
Class Eight Grade One’s gluttons reached a high level of agreement in their thinking at this moment.
And so, by noon, the temporary dining table set up in the Xiang Family courtyard was piled full of plate after plate of—tofu!
In the end, Xiang Chuan overruled the crowd, telling Da Xing to quickly stir-fry some chicken or beef for everyone.
“When you’re growing, you should eat meat! Don’t ask why!”
With that, Xiang Chuan viciously bit into a steak seared to medium-well.
Although everyone didn’t know why Xiang Chuan suddenly bristled, since she had arranged it, they would just follow the host family’s arrangements!
On the matter of eating, Class Eight Grade One had already started habitually blindly following Xiang Chuan’s instructions.
Xiang Chuan: …Originally thought all vegetarian would be too stingy, but now looking at this group of kids’ dumbstruck looks, they still need to eat some tofu.
When she was little, she heard her mother say that tofu replenishes the brain.
——
Fortunately, although Class Eight Grade One’s young people were a bit dense regarding meal choices, once eating started, the topic naturally shifted to last night’s A Bite of China.
Xiang Chuan slurped some noodles.
The discussion about A Bite of China had already been plenty at the dining table this morning, and when the documentary aired back then, she had also seen the 21st Century SNS blowing up with discussions, so now she was a bit callused to it.
However, whether it was 21st Century Earth’s ecological environment or Huaxia’s traditional gourmet food manufacturing, they all had fatal attraction for modern people, so Xiang Chuan didn’t stop these chattering discussions.
But as they kept talking, how did the topic suddenly shift from ham to bread?
“…Since a pig thigh can be made into ham by coating the surface with salt, couldn’t you make these breads into special varieties using a similar method?”
“Coating the entire surface with salt would be way too salty; steamed buns absorb soup so well, and flour would absorb even more.”
“Then use chili powder? Pepper?”
“…Why not consider normal sugar? Since buns can be directly stuffed with sugar as filling, bread could use a similar method.”
“Stuff in some meat or vegetables?”
……
Xiang Chuan put on gloves and picked up a stir-fried chicken leg from the bowl to gnaw on.
It had to be said that after the baptism of buns, Class Eight Grade One’s crowd’s direction on food seasoning had gradually aligned quite a bit with the 21st Century.
At least no one thought of stuffing bread with garlic or ginger, even though she quite liked garlic bread.
“Xiang Chuan, what do you think?”
As the discussion neared its end, Class President Lu Daiqing suddenly tossed the topic to her.
“Everything said is pretty good.”
Xiang Chuan patted her somewhat full belly and looked at the crowd watching her eagerly.
“Some ideas are right, like adding sugar or milk—we added milk this time too; adding more could enhance the flavor. But chili and pepper basically won’t be used as main seasonings; only for pranks or such, though they can be added for seasoning when making meat fillings.”
“What about salt? No need for salt?” Chou Manman asked doubtfully.
“Very few breads skip salt in the dough-making stage; salt directly affects the dough’s state. So even the round bread we tried making this morning inherently has salty seasoning, but it was just baked then, so the flour’s aroma covered it. But that doesn’t mean the salt disappeared.”
Xiang Chuan pointed at her mouth.
“After eating round bread, your mouth feels dry not just because the flour lacks moisture, but also partly because eating too much salt causes the body to lack water.”
“As for salty bread, we probably can’t make most types at this stage, but if we succeed with toast, we can try salty toast or such; others can wait until we figure out pork.”
The implication was that salty bread couldn’t do without pork.
But with these words, Class Eight Grade One’s crowd was quite satisfied. At least they knew bread seasoning could involve a lot of tricks, which excited everyone.
——
Afternoon.
After the fermented dough was divided by Xiang Chuan, it was shaped and put into molds.
Toast molds are usually divided into lidded and lidless types; the square toast that Xiang Chuan often bought at chain stores near her company or rental room in the 21st Century was the lidded type, while lidless ones she had mostly seen online or in American and European TV shows.
This time she checked and found they also differed in eating purposes: lidded square toast is better for sandwiches or direct eating, while lidless types usually pair with jam or butter.
So this time Xiang Chuan cut straight to it—all lidded toast.
Butter was nowhere in sight right now, let alone jam; occasionally making some applesauce would nearly wipe out half the home’s fruit stock, and more had to be saved for fruit milk and other desserts. Although the production escort ship was recently tackling shortened growth times after fruit tree grafting, if they didn’t conserve, she feared there’d be no fruit milk to drink.
From dividing and relaxing to the end of the second fermentation, it took another hour and a half or so; only when Da Xing was almost serving tea-less afternoon tea did she finally rush to have Ainuo and Liang Gong send the toast boxes into the oven.
She finally understood why the cooking UP mains she used to watch often made all sorts of bread but were lazy about toast.
Tiring!
For this kind of daily consumable, handing it over to the food industry for mass production was probably the most time- and effort-saving.
Spicy bread, in her personal impression, was more often curry bread? She’d never seen any directly adding chili sauce or chili powder.
