60s: I have a store

Chapter 176 Grinding Tofu

All the rosewood trees in the cave were moved out one by one, no more, no less. Together with the one in Zhou Yimin's house, there were 80 pieces in total. The thickest one was so thick that one person could not hug it.

Some of them were moved directly into the car.

You can’t finish the journey in one trip.

The carpenter gave an estimate based on the current market price. In Zhou Yimin's opinion, it was a bargain. But according to the villagers' understanding, it was not low.

At least let them spend a few dollars, or even ten dollars or so to buy a piece of wood, and they will never do such a stupid thing.

Those that cannot be packed will be piled up in the open space near the school.

After a final calculation, the money from selling the wood barely covered the money from the cart of corn. But it was still a little short, so Zhou Yimin simply said that they were even.

Zhou Yimin asked people to clean the stone mill in the village.

"Uncle Sixteen, what do you want to grind?" the man cleaning the millstone asked curiously.

"Have some tofu."

When I came back today, I brought back some soybeans that I bought for 1 yuan, and I was thinking of having a meal with tofu or something.

There is only one stone mill in the village, and it is public.

"Then we will help you grind the mill." The man said consciously.

Zhou Yimin shook his head: "Don't we have a donkey in the production team? Pull it over here."

If you have a donkey and don’t use it, who will use the man?

The man smiled bitterly: "The donkey is resting today, so I dare not drive it out to grind the millstone. Otherwise, the secretary will scold me to death."

The production team didn’t dare to use the donkey to work every day. In the countryside, those livestock were more valuable than humans, and sometimes they had to be well fed and served!

Zhou Yimin exclaimed, "What a great guy."

"Okay! Thank you for your hard work."

The amount of soybeans Zhou Yimin wanted to grind was not just three or five pounds, and he couldn't do it himself, so his original plan was to borrow the donkey from the production team.

Who knows, they still have days off. You know, in the countryside, people don’t have days off, they work almost every day.

Later generations often compared the donkeys in the production team, and such a joke was very popular at one time. However, they had no idea how long the donkeys in the production team worked and how long they rested.

"Hey! It's no big deal."

They were happy to work for Zhou Yimin.

Zhou Yimin never lets those who work for him suffer any loss.

After cleaning the stone mill, Zhou Yimin carried the soybeans over. Everyone stared with wide eyes, wondering how much soybeans could be ground?

"Uncle Sixteen, are these all ground tofu?"

Zhou Yimin nodded: "They have all been polished."

Good guy!
Someone immediately suggested calling two or three more people to help, so three or four women working in the village canteen were called over.

To make tofu, the first step is to crush and shell the soybeans. Pour the dried soybeans into the stone mill in batches and crush them to remove the shells and make them into flakes. Originally, Zhou Yimin planned to throw away the bean shells, but the villagers would definitely not waste them.

After all, even rice husks and wheat husks are not spared, so how could we spare bean husks?
So, the bean husks were collected by the people in the village canteen.

The women soaked the shelled bean slices in water. They were very familiar with these tasks and did not need Zhou Yimin to tell them what to do. They could just let him go back and have a rest.

"Leave some for tofu pudding," Zhou Yimin said. Many people can't tell the difference between tofu pudding, tofu pudding, and tofu.

In fact, the difference between them is the length of coagulation time. Tofu pudding takes the shortest time, followed by tofu pudding, which continues to coagulate into tofu.

When it comes to tofu pudding, the debate over sweet and salty begins again.

People in the south call tofu pudding water tofu or tofu pudding and only add sugar. Southerners believe that sweet tofu pudding tastes better because of its smooth, sweet and tender texture. It is delicious whether sprinkled with white sugar or brown sugar syrup, sweet but not greasy.

In the north, tofu pudding is mostly eaten as breakfast with sauce.

To prepare the stew, you need fresh mutton slices and good broth. The heat must be controlled well. You cannot use the stewing technique to keep the stew fresh.

After pouring the sauce and adding seasonings, the tofu pudding instantly fills the air with fragrance.

In fact, not only tofu pudding, but also tofu, the methods of making tofu are different in the north and south.

Tofu in the north is also called "brine tofu". Brine is used as a coagulant. The calcium and magnesium ions in the brine combine with soy protein to produce a coagulation reaction, which takes shape.

After the tofu is formed, it is pressed using a tofu press for about 30 minutes to further drain the tofu and achieve the required quality, making the product firm and elastic. Therefore, the tofu has a higher hardness and a rougher texture.

Tofu in the south uses gypsum as a coagulant, so it is also called "gypsum tofu". The chemical composition of gypsum is calcium sulfate, which has low solubility and solidifies slower than brine.

In addition, there is a kind of tofu called lactone tofu, which uses something called "gluconolactone" as a coagulant.

The coagulation caused by gluconolactone proceeds relatively slowly, so the soy milk can be sterilized at ultra-high temperatures, and then packed and sealed after adding gluconolactone.

The tofu obtained in this way has a much longer shelf life than the other two types of tofu.

For the three types of tofu, if they are of the same weight, the nutritional content is “northern tofu > southern tofu > rennet tofu”.

Especially in terms of calcium, southern tofu contains about the same amount of milk, while northern tofu contains even higher amount, while the amount of rennet tofu can be ignored.

"No problem! Yimin, just wait."

Everyone was in high spirits and worked very hard.

Because they knew that since Zhou Yimin ground so much tofu, his family certainly wouldn't be able to eat it all, and according to his style of doing things, he would probably let everyone have a bite.

Almost everyone has a share, so they must be very motivated to work!

"We have brine in our village, right?" Zhou Yimin asked again.

If there is no brine, you can only use gypsum to make the gypsum tofu in the south. Gypsum is relatively easy to get. The last time I built a house, there was some lime left. Lime can be processed into gypsum.

"Yes, Grandma Qi's family used to make tofu." Someone responded immediately.

After the shelled beans were soaked for a while, they began to grind them into pulp.

This step is usually done by two people. One person uses a husking arm to turn the stone mill continuously, and the other is responsible for adding soybeans and water. The human power turns the stone mill and grinds the soybean flakes into soy milk with clean water.

This soy milk also needs to filter out the dregs.

The woman fills a tight flour bag with the ground soy milk and then squeezes the liquid into a bucket.

The pure soy milk is then poured into a large pot, boiled, and put into a wooden barrel mixed with brine in proportion, stirred with a wooden paddle, and then allowed to cool and solidify.

Finally, the village women took out a trough-shaped wooden board about 60×60×4 cm long with a checkered surface and placed a piece of white cloth on each board. Then they used a ladle to scoop the solidified tofu pudding into the troughs of several wooden boards, covered it with the white cloth in the troughs, and then pressed a wooden board and a stone on it to reduce its water content and take shape.

Of course, they did not forget to save some tofu pudding and take it to Zhou Yimin's home.

(End of this chapter)