Friends who like to eat pancakes don’t know if they have the same trouble as me, that is, the layers inside the pancakes are not obvious and easy to stick together. Especially when frying the dough, the overall texture is thick and difficult to chew, and it is not as soft and delicious as I imagined. When I have nothing to do, I like to tinker with pancakes at home. What method should I use to make the pancakes soft and layered?
For pancakes to be soft, first of all, the moisture content must be high. How to bake the pancakes so that the pancakes can easily come out without any technical difficulty? In the past, when we were making pancakes, we would use puff pastry to form the layers. The puff pastry is nothing more than oil mixed with flour and some seasonings to create a layer that separates the pie crust. Spread a layer of puff pastry on each layer to create layers. But this friend who has some technical difficulties and cannot pancake is particularly prone to failure because there are too many factors that affect the final product. Occasionally I thought about my ordinary all-purpose flour used in pastry. The flour has a certain stickiness and can easily stick the crust together. Then I changed the medium-gluten flour to low-gluten flour, and finally changed directly from the low-gluten flour to cornmeal without gluten and gritty texture. After this change, I suddenly realized that cornmeal has no gluten and is not as delicate as flour. When mixed with oil, it turns into small gritty particles. In this way, even a novice can bake a thousand-layer pancake.
Home-style soft thousand-layer flatbread that even a novice can bake
Ingredients required: 500 grams of flour, 150 grams of hot water, 170 grams of room temperature water, 5 grams of salt, cornmeal 30 grams, 30 grams of oil
Tools required: pan
1. Kneading dough
Put flour, hot water, room temperature water, 1/2 Mix together the salt and mix well, stir into large dough, and knead into a smooth dough. Cover with moist steaming cloth and leave for half an hour.
2. The most important magic weapon for layering-cornmeal puff pastry
Add 30 grams of cornmeal, 30 grams of cooking oil, and the remaining half of salt and stir well. The pastry is now ready.
(Note: For cooking oil, you can use your usual cooking oil at home. It can be hot, raw or cold.)
3. Make the cake embryo
After the dough wakes up, do not knead it and straighten it into a long strip, because the thousand-layer cake needs a certain thickness to show multiple layers. Here we make four ingredients.
Apply a little oil on the cutting board to prevent it from sticking, press the dough flat, then roll it out into a rectangular piece of dough, and evenly spread a layer of pastry. After applying it, it’s time for another little trick to help with layering. We need to divide the pie crust into 8 parts, 6 of which are small and two are large. Be careful to only cut the two sides, don't cut off the middle, then stack the smaller ones first, and finally wrap the larger ones tightly for finishing work.
After everything is done, take out the first ingredient. Press flat and roll out into a thick pie crust. Important points: Pay attention to the fact that you must use even pressure and gentle pressure to roll the dough from both sides, so that the layers are even.
Four: Pancakes
To bake thicker pancakes, I like to use a frying pan, preheat it over medium-low heat and brush with oil, put in the pancake base and close the lid.
Watch at any time and turn it over when the color becomes darker. During this period, you should also squeeze like this frequently to help the layers come out crisper and neater.
The baking speed is very fast, and the two sides of the golden crust are puffed up and it is ready to be taken out of the pan. Look at the softness and layering, whether you are craving for it or not.
1. The puff pastry must be made with cornmeal. If it is not available, it can be replaced with low-gluten flour.
2. The dough must be soft for the cake to be soft.
3. Beating and squeezing more will help the layer to come out.