This kind of Tujia sesame seed cake is a specialty of Enshi, Hubei Province, and its biggest feature is the fermentation of old noodles. The first piece of old noodles is extracted from grain koji and put into dough. Yeast is best for making bread. If you use yeast to make sesame cakes, you will be laughed at by your peers.
In fact, the method of making steamed bread and sesame seed cakes with "old noodles" is very common in the whole north. When baking powder is not so popular, "old noodles" is the most traditional and primitive fermentation method: one piece is pulled from the previous noodle every time and reserved for the next "noodle head". This "endless" "old face" is called differently in different places. In addition to "old noodles", some places are called "noodle fat", some places are called "noodle head" and some places are called "yeast head". The noodles made by "old noodles" are more biting, and there is a sweet fragrance after the entrance.
2. There is meat inside and outside.
This Tujia sesame seed cake, known as "Chinese pizza", looks really foreign. It is a round cake with a diameter of more than 20 cm, with a slightly thicker edge and a slightly thinner middle, with a little thin meat filling on it. When I first came out of the oven, the cake was still bubbling with oil. The whole cake was crisp and brown, and the fragrance could spread far away.
Because the old dough is fermented, the sour taste is neutralized with alkaline water. The operator should throw a large piece of dough weighing more than ten kilograms on the panel, cut it open with a knife, evenly coat it with alkaline water, and then rub it hard. So repeat it several times, and you can feel that this "alkalization" process needs arm strength from one side.
After the alkali beating is completed, the master in charge of setting will pull the dough into a uniform strip, then divide it into two palm-sized dough, roll it out with a rolling pin, roll it with a layer of meat stuffing and flatten it from above; After finishing into the shape of a flying saucer, you can put a layer of meat in the concave part in the middle and enter the oven. Because there is a layer of meat inside and outside, the baked sesame seeds are fragrant from the inside out, everything is four pieces, crisp outside and tender inside, which really feels like pizza. Tujia sesame seed cake is attractive because as long as you pass in front of the sesame seed cake shop, you will definitely smell the smell of runny nose. Many people think the oil is delicious after eating it, and they think there must be a lot of oil in it. But in fact, Tujia sesame seed cake did not go through any process of "brushing oil" on the surface during the production process, and the oil on the surface was baked from the meat stuffing.
Flour: Tujia biscuits use "medium gluten flour", because the gluten of flour is too high and the foam is not strong, and the biscuits made will be a little hard; Low gluten flour is not easy to form.
Mixing noodles: "Old noodles" is the introduction, and the temperature and water temperature determine the fermentation time; Usually it takes an hour and a half for a bag of flour and dough to ferment.
Stuffing: This is the most important link. A large pot of meat stuffing on the chopping board is actually made by mixing and chopping pork from different parts, and adding the unique spices of Tujia nationality. This kind of meat stuffing with Tujia flavor will give off a strong aroma when baked at high temperature.