Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 285 Making Cream and Proofing

Master Li set up the mold with the dough rolls arranged so everyone could see them. He put down the rolling pin, clapped his hands, and stood aside, letting Sister Shang, Guan He, and a few others come up and operate the machine while he watched from the side.

After a group of women had divided the dough and placed it into the molds, Chef Li went over to check the proofing box, put the molds inside, closed the proofing box door, and said, "40 degrees, two hours. The fermentation process must be slow and patient. Don't rush it. Soup won't taste good if it's not properly cooked, and bread won't taste good if it's not fermented long enough."

Everyone washed their hands, cleaned up their tools, and tidied up the dough mixer and egg beater. They put away the flour and other materials and went out for lunch.

A few days later, the food factory was able to bake chiffon cakes and honeycomb cakes normally. The bread also came in many varieties, including toast, baguette, scallion buns, milk buns, pineapple buns, croissants, honey rolls, coconut buns, and red bean buns. The toast alone had five or six different ways of being made, such as white toast, butter toast, and sliced ​​toast. Finally, it shed the image of an old-fashioned food factory.

There are more than ten kinds of biscuits, including cookies, egg yolk pastries, regular soda crackers, butter biscuits, milk shortbread, and cocoa biscuits. However, they haven't been tested in the market yet, so it's unknown which ones will sell better. Actually, the recipes and processes for biscuits are not much different; it's just a matter of adding a little something during the making process.

After a few days, everyone at the food factory was very motivated and had become proficient in making the products. Some biscuits and bread had been baked, and the next step was packaging them and then changing the products at the various distribution points.

Han San Store carries generic packaging for bread and biscuits; it's very cheap. The packaging ordered by Brothers Food Factory is still being processed; it was ordered from Fengtian and won't arrive until the end of the month.

March 17th. The second day of the second lunar month is the day the dragon raises its head; this is the day for washing and cutting hair.

The electric stove in the corner of the food factory workshop was finally put to use. Xiao Wei had never understood why there was an electric stove there.

Master Li unpacked the boxes of butter (solidified and tasteless), chopped it up with a knife, and put it into a whisk, filling about one-third of the container. Meanwhile, one of his apprentices was cooking syrup on an electric stove in a stainless steel bucket. Sugar and water were poured into the bucket in a 2:1 ratio and heated, turning into a thick, sticky, yellow syrup that was more than half full.

Once the syrup has cooled down enough to handle, add it to the mixing bowl along with the butter in a 5:3 ratio, then beat at high speed. The butter ratio is 5.

Soon, the yellow butter and yellow syrup in the bucket mixed together and were gradually whipped into a thick, white paste.

Once the sharp points on the claws were firmly planted, Chef Li removed the mixing bowl, poured the whipped cream into a prepared plastic bucket, and said, "It's too cold here, this will be quite troublesome to make. You'll need to prepare a warmer, and it would be best to have a small oven, otherwise it will be difficult to decorate."

Xiao Wei nodded and said, "I know that, it will coagulate, right? It will become very hard."

Master Li nodded and said, "Yes, it will harden quickly and needs to be kept heated. It's much better in the summer. Butter is actually the lowest grade ingredient in cream cakes. Many places abroad have already phased it out, but it's just starting in China. We are trying to see if we can introduce new technology or become an agent, but the market hasn't opened up yet, and we're worried about poor sales."

Xiao Wei asked, "What kind of cream is that?"

Master Li said, "Both white and yellow butter are animal fats. White butter is made from mutton fat, and yellow butter is made from beef tallow. There's also lard, but lard can only be used for pastries and biscuits, not for decorating. You'll learn later that lard is used in things like egg tarts, layered cakes, and puff pastry. The butter that's popular abroad now is plant-based, mainly made from palm oil. It's very light, not as sweet as these, has a great texture, and is less likely to cause weight gain. It's not available in China yet; where I live, we can only use animal fats."

Xiao Wei asked, "When do you think we'll have this?"

Master Li said, "I'll try to do it as soon as possible. I'm still figuring out a way. I'll send it to Guanyuan when I have it. That one needs a freezer to store, and it usually needs to be refrigerated, which is the opposite of this one."

Xiao Wei asked, "Can we add butter to bread and cookies? Would that make them sell better?" He dipped his finger in some butter and put it in his mouth.

Master Li nodded and said, "Sure, I've added it to all of them. You can try it yourselves. For example, with a pineapple bun, just cut the top open with a knife and squeeze the cream in. It's that simple. The cost doesn't actually increase much, but the selling price can be raised."

Xiao Wei nodded. He had been learning from Master Li every day during this period and found that the actual cost of bread, cakes, cream and other things was unbelievably low. For example, the birthday cake he bought in Fengtian last time cost fifty yuan, but the actual cost was definitely no more than ten yuan. And that was after factoring in the additional costs of packaging and so on.

Master Li said, "The cost of vegetable fat milk is lower, about two-thirds that of cream, but it sells for two to three times the price of cream cakes. The key is the piping technique; it's a skill-based price. You need to make sure your workers practice diligently. It can create very large three-dimensional patterns, and it can also make a flower more lifelike."

Xiao Wei pointed to a 32cm cake base and asked Chef Li, "How much would this cost for the buttercream?"

Master Li glanced at the base and said, "It would cost around 130 where I'm from, but it should be lower in Fengtian, around 80 or 90 yuan for a single layer. If you use vegetable-based butter, it would cost 240 where I'm from, and about 150 here. This is too small; the larger the base, the bigger the price difference. If you were to make a multi-tiered tart cake, a base this big with three layers would sell for over 400 yuan, but if you sell it separately, it would only cost a little over 100 yuan. So you need to figure out how to make it fancy, to make it look good, to make it seem high-end."

Xiao Wei nodded.

Master Li said, "Are the foam boards ready?" Foam boards are polystyrene boards, and they come in different thicknesses.

Xiao Wei said, "We're ready. Hongliang and the others are working on making a circle. That thing is hard to handle; it flies everywhere."

Master Li said, "Yes, this is quite troublesome. But it's the only way to do it right now. I'm thinking of new prototyping methods, for example, with plastic materials, but it's still in the experimental stage. Come and take a look when you have finished products."

Liu Hongliang walked in from outside and said, "Boss, I've cleaned it all out. Where should I put it?" His hair and body were covered in foam particles. Xiao Wei said, "Get out of here right now and clean your hair and body before you come back in. What if this flies into your bread and you eat it?"

Liu Hongliang looked at himself, turned around and went out again, banging on the door.

Master Li said, "Take your things over there and make a sample there. It's not easy to move them around here, and they're likely to get damaged."

Xiao Wei came out and called Liu Hongliang to drive. Cream, a bunch of round things of various sizes cut from foam board, food coloring, piping tips, turntable cutters, stainless steel bowls and buckets—all of these were loaded into the car. Master Li, along with his two apprentices and Xiao Wei, got into the car and drove out of the yard toward the restaurant.

When they arrived at the cake shop, Li Wen opened the door, and everyone started moving everything inside.

(End of this chapter)