After Xu Zhuo finished breakfast, the old man came to the kitchen with him and began to prepare to make cat ears.

As a widely circulated national snack, the production threshold for cat ears is not high, and basically as long as you have simple pastry experience, you can make it.

Like sugar pancakes, cat ears should be mixed with a white dough and a sugar dough.

However, the sugar dough in the cat's ears should be made with brown sugar and noodles, which is quite different from sugar oil cakes.

In addition, sugar pancakes and soft dough are made, while cat ears are normal dough, which is slightly softer than hand-rolled dough.

Before the meeting, the old man first instructed Xu Zhuo a task.

"Go to the supermarket next door and buy some milk powder, you need to put milk powder in the white dough to be delicious. ”

Xu Zhuo originally thought that the old man's side was about to start, but he came with such a big gasp.

After buying the milk powder, the old man began to mix the noodles, he first used warm water to melt some baking powder, and then poured some flour and milk powder into the basin.

"The milk powder should not be higher than one-third of the flour, otherwise the dough will be sticky and not easy to match. ”

The old man stirred the milk powder and flour with his hands, beat an egg, and then slowly poured the yeast water into the basin, first stirring the flour into a dough, and then kneading it into a dough with moderate hardness and softness.

Once the dough is reconciled, place it in a basin and start to rise, then prepare to make brown sugar dough.

Making brown sugar dough is more complicated than white dough, because brown sugar dough not only uses ingredients to stew, but also has higher requirements in terms of taste.

Because the sweet and salty flavor in the cat's ears all comes out of the brown sugar dough, the white dough only needs to have a milky flavor.

"Why do you want to arrange it like that? Can't you make the white dough salty?"

The old man carried the brown sugar bag and said while pouring it into the basin: "Okay, yes, it's just that the cat ears made are not very good-looking, which affects the overall appearance." ”

Almost half a bag of brown sugar was poured into the basin, and the old man poured a bowl of warm water into it, stirring it with chopsticks, and telling Xu Zhuo the reason for this.

There are many flavors of cat ears, such as salt and pepper, spice, spicy, cumin, barbecue, etc., and the source of these flavors is actually spices.

In addition, the spices used here are colored, so they will stand out when mixed into the white dough.

Especially after cutting into slices, the black spots formed by those spices can easily be mistaken for unclean things mixed with the dough, which affects the appetite very much.

Therefore, when everyone is making cat ears, they invariably put the seasoning in the brown sugar dough, which makes the taste unchanged, but the appearance is more beautiful.

After the brown sugar melted, the old man strained it again with a fine mesh sieve, and then added yeast and a small spoon of salt to the brown sugar water, and added another spoonful of five-spice powder.

In this way, the cat's ears are made into a mixture of sweet, salty, spiced, milky and other flavors.

Although the taste makes people feel very mixed, but it is not bad to eat, in fact, the reason why cat ears can become a national snack is because of their changeable taste and crispy texture.

After stirring the brown sugar water well, the old man poured flour into another basin, and then slowly poured the brown sugar water into it, first stirring into the dough, and then kneading it into a dough.

The next step is to put the white dough in a basin for proofing.

At this time, the store has already started to be busy, washing and cutting vegetables and side dishes, and everyone is hurrying to do their own work.

And Cao Kun and the others have already washed all the ducks and marinated them, and they are boiling maltose at this time.

"Brother Kun, I think it's better to clean the duck at night in the future, just marinate the duck before getting off work, and then you can marinate it the next day, and you don't have to get up early." ”

Cao Kun nodded: "Yes, yes, yes, we also discussed it like this, mainly because I didn't expect it to be so popular last night......"

The old man walked around the back kitchen with his hands behind his back, pointing out the cooks and assistants who were working from time to time.

Time passed quickly, and two hours later, the old man began the second stage of the production of cat ears.

This step is simple, to put it bluntly, it is kneading and rolling dough.

Knead the proofed dough again to drain the air inside, then roll out a thin sheet of two millimeters with a rolling pin.

There are no strict rules on the thickness of the dough sheet, but the thinner the rolling, the more layers of the roll will be, and the more beautiful the cat ears will be.

After rolling out the two types of dough into thin slices, the old man spread the white dough sheet on the cutting board, then took a brush and smeared a little starch water on the dough sheet.

"This starch water mainly acts as a binder, so that the two dough sheets stick firmly together, so as to avoid the phenomenon of falling apart when slicing. ”

In fact, there is no need for the old man to explain, Xu Zhuo already knows, because he has just obtained the boutique skill of making cat ears.

Tsk, Xu Xiaochu's online store has another snack.

However, when Xu Xiaochu will be online, Xu Zhuo is not very clear, so he can only look at the framework built by Tang Xiaoying and the progress of trademark registration.

After brushing the starch water, the old man spread the brown sugar dough sheet on top of it, and then gently rolled it out with a rolling dough to make the two dough sheets firmly combined.

After waiting for a few minutes, after the starch water had been absorbed by the two sheets, the old man brushed another layer of starch water on top of the brown sugar noodles, and then slowly rolled it up from one end.

This step seems simple, but it is actually difficult, because there can be no gaps in it when rolling, especially in the center of the roll at the beginning, you must pay attention to it.

Otherwise, the cat ears will become hollow, which will affect the appearance.

After rolling the two sheets of dough into long strips, the old man cut them in the middle with a kitchen knife, and then rolled them up with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer to freeze.

Freezing is an indispensable step in making cat ears, and only after freezing, the soft and collapsed strip can be cut into thin slices to have the appearance of cat ears.

Otherwise, no matter how good the knife work is, the cat ears cut out will not be formed, let alone beautiful.

However, there is also a special aspect of freezing, and you can't freeze it too hard.

If it is frozen hard, not only is it difficult to cut, but the key is that it is not the shape of cat ears when it is cut out.

Only when it is slightly hard to freeze, it will form an elliptical with sharp corners due to the squeezing of the knife edge.

This is the right cat ear.

After freezing in the freezer for about forty minutes, the old man took out the two dough blanks.

After pinching the hardness and feeling satisfied, he instructed Xu Zhuo: "Get out of the pot and heat the oil, and I'll start slicing it now." ”

In the morning, the oil pan for frying sugar pancakes was not removed, and Xu Zhuo just opened the fire directly.

He was so busy, Guo Xingwang came over again: "Why are you starting to burn oil again? What are you going to fry again?"

"Fry some cat ears ......"

"Yo, this is my favorite, I need to study hard.

Xu Zhuo, what kind of pasta do you make in the future and call me, I just found out today that making pasta is so interesting......"