While speaking, Wang Chunhua's fingers kept turning, and cookies wrapped in golden sesame seeds were soon baked. Wang Chunhua said that every good dough should be continuously kneaded to increase its toughness. The sesame seeds stained on the sesame cake have gone through many processes such as pickling, peeling and frying. No machine has been invented to make Zhoucun sesame cakes by hand instead of people. The taste and taste of sesame seed cakes depend entirely on the efforts of both hands.
However, the two most difficult processes for making Zhoucun sesame seed cake are rubbing and sticking. "The more skilled the extension technology, the smaller the diameter of sesame cake." Wang Chunhua said that there are 60 Zhoucun sesame cakes sold in the market, which can make one kilogram of flour, each with a diameter of about 13 cm, and there are about 2,000 sesame seeds on them. 20 12, Wang Chunhua "special supply" baked wheat cake came out. A kilo of flour can make 128, each with a diameter of only about 7 cm, but it can still cover 2000 sesame seeds. However, this "special supply" sesame seed cake is only used in private ordering or competitions. "I grew up watching my mother make baked wheat cakes. At that time, I was not tall enough, so I stepped on a stool to learn how to make sesame cakes. " Wang Chunhua has been attached to baked wheat cakes since she was a child, but she has today's superb skills, which she owes to her teacher. 1993, following Liang, the third generation inheritor of Zhoucun sesame seed cake, began to learn to make real Zhoucun sesame seed cake.
Wang Chunhua recalled that posting this process really made her suffer a lot. "The early ovens were not as advanced as they are now, and there was no shelter on both sides of the furnace wall. It is necessary to manually put the cake blank into a high temperature furnace of 240 C. " In her first year of study, her arm often suffered extensive burns. Because of the need for constant practice, it is often that old injuries have not healed and new injuries have been added.
With the production technology gradually on the right track, Wang Chunhua has encountered a bottleneck period. "You can't use any auxiliary tools for posting, and the cake blank is easily deformed in this process." In the past year, the biscuits produced in Wang Chunhua are not round, but oval. She told reporters that she wanted to give up many times during this period, but because of her love for biscuits, she gritted her teeth and persisted.
In the same period, many students from Liang chose to give up, but they persisted in the end and stood out among more than 50 disciples. She was chosen as the fourth generation inheritor by Teacher Liang. "Making sesame cakes is a thankless job, and I often go to work a little bit." Wang Chunhua said there were 65,438+050 bakers in the workshop. On average, each chef needs to be 2700 bakers every day. Because the whole process is handmade, the hardships of the process can be imagined.
As an inheritor, in 2000, she began to "find" suitable inheritors in many cities in the province. There are about 100 direct disciples of Wang Chunhua, and 200 further disciples. Wang Chunhua said that although the company's training period is 20 days, it will take at least three years for an apprentice to master a full set of techniques and produce qualified baked cakes with a diameter of 1 1 cm. The long time and boring process have made fewer and fewer young people willing to learn this craft. Wang Chunhua also had to lower the standard of accepting apprentices and relax the original age limit of 18-25 to 35.
Although it is difficult to recruit workers, Wang Chunhua is still fulfilling his responsibilities as an inheritor. In addition to recruiting young people who can inherit Zhou Chun's baking skills in Zibo, Jinan and other provinces and cities, she has also done research in Yiyuan, Zibo, and will build a baking factory to recruit a group of apprentices.
"Zhoucun sesame seed cake can be called an' ancient food', and its shelf life is completely extended by craftsmanship without adding any additives." As an inheritor, Wang Chunhua hopes that Zhoucun sesame seed cake can be preserved as an "intangible cultural heritage". After many years, the craft of making sesame cakes will not be lost. People from all over the world will taste the flavor of Zibo by tasting Zhoucun sesame seed cake. The development goal of Zhoucun sesame seed cake is to explore the traditional culture of Zhoucun sesame seed cake and combine it with tourism industry to continue to expand its influence.
With the appearance of Zhoucun ancient shopping mall, the company also saw the business opportunities for development. In 2004, a small stove was built in a 20-square-meter hut in the south of Yinnancheng, an ancient shopping mall in Zhoucun, and a live advertisement was made while making and selling it. At that time, the ancient shopping mall was just developed and little known. After a month, there are very few tourists, and the monthly income is seven or eight hundred yuan.
At that time, many local time-honored enterprises settled in the ancient mall with the company, but after several years of operation, there was no benefit, and many enterprises also demolished the door of the ancient mall. However, Zhang has repeatedly insisted that "when tourism develops well in the future, the ingenious combination of traditional handicrafts and tourism will be another development opportunity for us." In this way, the company has continuously expanded its store in Zhoucun Ancient Shopping Mall, established Zhoucun Sesame Cake Museum, moved the history, culture and technology of Zhoucun Sesame Cake to the museum, looked at the historical archives and objects, and looked at the on-site production to make the "intangible cultural heritage" come alive. In Zhoucun Sesame Cake Museum in Zibo, the cake maker holds the dough in his left hand and rotates the cake with his right hand, and the cake becomes a flywheel. In the blink of an eye, the dough the size of a ping-pong ball turned into a cake blank as thin as a cicada. Gently lift it with your hands, quickly dip it in a wooden plate covered with sesame seeds, then put it on the back of your right finger and send it directly into a high temperature furnace at 240℃ ... stretching and mashing cakes, which is light and flexible. Zhoucun sesame seed cake with a history of hundreds of years became a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006. Zhoucun sesame seed cake has a long history and exquisite production, and has become a typical representative of Zibo cuisine.
Walk into Zhoucun Baking Museum and learn about the rich history and culture of Zhoucun Baking. Stepping into the exhibition hall on the first floor, the antique is filled with a modern atmosphere that is difficult to cover up. The wall is covered with documents about Zhoucun sesame seed cake. From the origin of baked wheat cake to its later inheritance and development, precious pictures and words vividly tell tourists the profound historical origin of this ancient snack.