Pancakes are a very ancient category of pasta. In the earliest days, noodles were even called soup pancakes and suo pancakes. This shows how old pancakes are in the world of gourmet food.

Among the many cake recipes, "dead noodle" cake is the simplest and most homely one. After all, even the fermentation process is omitted.

But it’s not easy to make simple delicacies delicious. Let’s answer this question this time.

The demand for pancakes is often that fluffy and soft ones are more popular. "Dry and hard" is not a compliment when it comes to pasta.

In fact, we do not lack methods to make pasta soft and not hard. The most common method in the world is "fermentation", which changes the structure of pasta through the proliferation of microorganisms to produce gas to achieve the goal of fluffy and soft pasta.

But the word "dead noodles" in the "dead noodle" flatbread shows that fermentation cannot be used to make it soft, so we have to find another way.

Fortunately, this problem is not difficult, and there are many ways to solve it.

Among the main components of hot noodle flour, only gluten (protein) can absorb water, so the total water holding capacity of the flour is limited, but most of the water will evaporate when the hot noodle cake is heated.

The freshly made cake may still be soft, but as time goes by, the moisture will be lost more and faster, and the cake will become harder as it cools.

The formation principle of dough for pancakes is that flour is composed of protein and starch. Protein is soluble in water, but starch is insoluble in water. When water is added to flour, the protein binds the water and starch together through adhesion, forming dough.

If the concentration of starch in the dough is too high, the pancake will be hard. However, starch also has a characteristic, which is that after boiling water, it will gelatinize, making it difficult for the starch to stick together and the pancake will not be hard.

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The role of oil in flour When kneading dough, we can add an appropriate amount of oil to the dough. Oil has a good isolation and protective effect. It can hinder the formation of gluten and make the gluten softer.

The oil and flour are fully mixed, which expands the surface area of ??the oil. The oil is evenly wrapped around the outside of the flour particles. However, the surface tension of the oil causes the flour to stick to the dough, hindering the gluten of the dough and making the dough softer.

Although oil is hydrophobic, it can also cover the surface of the dough and reduce the loss of water in the cake.

Therefore, when we make flatbread, we can add an appropriate amount of cooking oil, lard or butter to the dough and knead it into a dough to increase the extensibility and softness of the dough, and also to prevent the moisture in the cake from leaking out.

If the dough is lost, the flatbread made in this way will be soft when cooled.

The reason why the flatbread becomes hard is that you choose the wrong flour. When making flatbread, it is best to choose low-gluten flour or medium-gluten flour. Secondly, you cannot use cold water to knead the dough. Cold water should not be used to knead the dough.

Afterwards, the starch in the flour is not easy to expand and gelatinize, and the protein can form a tight gluten network by absorbing water during the mixing and resting process.

Therefore, the dough produced by cold water is tight and tough, and the resulting flatbread is too chewy. During the cooling process, the water evaporates and the taste becomes harder.

The above are the basic reasons why the dead-noodle flatbread becomes hard after cooling. Next, we will solve the problem of making the dead-noodle flatbread not harden after cooling.

Soft flatbread is relatively simple and convenient to make and does not need to be fermented. Many people particularly like to eat it, but the resulting flatbread has a hard texture. Therefore, we only need to follow the above method to select the right flour, add oil, and half-boil the noodles.

By making it, you will definitely be able to make a doughy flatbread that is soft in texture and does not harden when cooled.