Chapter 961 - A Craftsmans Heart Is Hidden In The Details (1/2)

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

The aroma the crowd outside the restaurant smelled originated from the completion of this first step by Yuan Zhou, the aroma of the pork mincemeat.

At the front door, if Wu Hai wasn’t stopped by the people behind him, he would have already charged into the restaurant to devour the mincemeat.

The sleeping beast within Wu Hai had been awakened.

That’s right. The door had already been opened by Yuan Zhou. After all, breakfast time was arriving. It was about time the door was opened.

As for the huge crowd gathering outside his restaurant, Yuan Zhou had long obtained an immunity towards this scene.

Yuan Zhou started kneading the dough to make the noodles and he was as skilled as ever. After all, he was also a master of cooked wheaten food now. It was natural for his dough kneading skill to be even better than the past.

Chinese cooking was extremely complicated, as even dough kneading alone had 17 different main techniques. Compared to the automatic kneading with the help of machines, it was much more complicated.

Even ignoring the techniques involved when making pastries, when one considered the saying of “Pastries are the shell, while cooked wheaten food is the essence”, one could see the difference between the two.

Thud! Thud!

Sounds of the dough slamming onto the kneading board rang out. Yuan Zhou had reached the dough flinging stage.

In the historical records, there was a person known as Wheat Xu. When handling the dough, he only needed to knead it once, roll it once, and pull it once, three onces in total, and the dough would be ready to be steamed. If one ate while it was hot, it would be soft and chewy, and the bun would wrap around one’s teeth while not sticking to it at the same time. And since the dough he used were made of oat flour, the bun would be sweet, and as one ate it bite by bite, it would be extremely delicious.

One could even dip the bun into some mutton gravy before putting it into one’s mouth. The enjoyment one could derive from that was indescribable.

Back to the topic, the reason why Yuan Zhou knew that was because of the 23 kneading techniques he knew, one of them was the technique of Wheat Xu.

As an intermediate master of cooked wheaten food, he still had many things to do. Unfortunately, he was only steaming the leftover dough.

Yuan Zhou was very good with his hands, but most people had their attention on a new object in Yuan Zhou’s kitchen. From outside the restaurant, that object looked like an exquisite bamboo basket.

It was hung on the ceiling with a hemp rope as thick as bottle’s cap and was about 15 to 20 centimeters from the stove on the ground. It was quite big, and even from outside the restaurant, one could see that it was about the same size as a standing fan.

“What is that?”

“Boss Yuan has a new toy. Shameless Wu, you are the nearest. Get a good look. What exactly is that?”

“Although I don’t know what’s inside that bamboo basket, I can see that the new breakfast today is Dan Dan Noodles. What Boss Yuan made earlier is the mincemeat for the Dan Dan Noodles.”

“That’s obvious. Even I can see that.”

Everyone was curious about the new toy hanging from the ceiling. More importantly, someone noticed that a suspended hook was used to hang the basket. That wasn’t there previously. Moreover, there were customers swearing that the suspended hook wasn’t there as of last night.

Therefore, one could conclude that this hook was something installed by Yuan Zhou after the pub was closed last night. When they kept thinking along the same line, the reason he was in a rush to put the hook on was because it was related to the new breakfast today.

Thus, everyone’s curiosity was piqued as they finally pushed Wu Hai to go get a better look.

Wu Hai squinted his eyes and tried his best to study the basket before finally noticing something.

“There seems to be a pot in the basket?” Wu Hai was unsure. “I think so, there is steam billowing out of it. And the black bottom of a pot was exposed below the basket.”

Hearing that, everyone double-checked and found that the hanging basket had indeed not covered the entirety of the pot. The bottom of the pot was exposed. Everyone had merely missed it earlier.

Hanging a pot with a basket?

“What’s the pot for?” asked a customer.