Master Archaeologist

Chapter 28 A Hard-Won Bowl of Noodles!

"Senior brother Zhuang, hurry up and ask Sister Li in the kitchen if there is a bed made for you to borrow. Let me borrow one."

"If not, go out and ask the villagers to borrow it!"

"Senior Sister Su, please go to the warehouse and bring another bag of unhulled sticky millet."

"For the rest, use your mobile phone to look up a kind of pasta called He He, and learn how to make this pasta!"

"Next, we will use the method of making glutinous rice noodles to try to reproduce this bowl of millet noodles from 4000 years ago!"

As soon as he returned to the small experimental room vacated for them in the institute, Chen Han hurriedly gave instructions to the members of the research team who were staring at the dough in a daze.

"Hey?!"

"Hele?"

"Hele?"

Su Sa, Zhuang Yunpeng, and Zhang Jianbo were all a little confused, not knowing what Chen Han's sudden proposal was.

Only Wang Weida from Shandong slapped his thigh with a face full of enlightenment: "That's right!"

"How did I forget to eat!"

He He is not only popular in Qinghai and Shanxi, but it is also a very famous delicacy in Shandong!

When he didn't mention it, Wang Weida still couldn't remember it.

But as soon as Chen Han mentioned it, he immediately thought of the production method and raw materials of 饸饹, which are indeed quite unique among Huaxia pasta!

With a bang, all the people in the small room scattered, and moved quickly according to Chen Han's arrangement.

Zhang Jianbo and Lin Ya also took out their mobile phones, and checked the details of He He on the Internet.

Ten minutes later, Su Sa and Zhuang Yunpeng returned to the temporary laboratory with a bag of shelled millet and a borrowed cot.

"Come on, come on, take action!"

After weighing [-] grams of shelled millet, Chen Han picked up the mortar and began to pound it.

Beating, grinding and shelling are still the same process as before.

Keep 20%~30% of the grains, after being ground, soak them in warm water until softened, and then hammer them into a ball of dough.

After spending half a day, after finally making the dough, Chen Han excitedly picked up the 饸饹 bed, and put it on the boiling cauldron.

"Senior brother Zhuang, put the dough into the bed."

After Zhuang Yunpeng put the millet dough smashed out by the hammer into the bed, Chen Han held a piece of wooden support in one hand and pressed it down using the principle of leverage.

As he increased his strength, noodles began to be squeezed out of the round hole under the bed.

however!
Before the extruded noodles fell into the pot, they broke and scattered in mid-air.

When it fell into the pot and boiled, it has become a piece of mush, where there are no noodles, it is simply a bowl of pimple soup.

Everyone's face changed immediately.

Failed again!

Should not be!

Wang Weida squatted down with his head in his arms, very perplexed and unclear.

In fact, in the past half a month, everyone has privately pondered how to make millet noodles.

Regardless of the limitations of the times, everyone has proposed several methods.

However, most of them need to add something to the millet flour that can increase the viscosity.

Even Zhuang Yunpeng thought of extracting gluten protein from wheat noodles and artificially adding it to millet flour, which can improve the stickiness of millet flour.

Let alone pressure, even ramen is not a problem!
However, the ancestors of the La family 4000 years ago could not have mastered the ability of chemical extraction.

Even if aliens taught them how to do chemical extraction, it is impossible to use this thing to make noodles.
If you want to make millet noodles, you must only study from the production process.

However, even the production method of 饸饹 cannot reproduce millet noodles.

How did the ancestors of the La family 4000 years ago make millet noodles?
Wang Weida couldn't understand it.

The others, including Chen Han, all frowned and looked at the "millet lump soup" floating in the boiling iron pot.

"Why in the end?"

Suddenly, Wang Weida thought of what Zhuang Yunpeng said about extracting gluten from millet noodles, and raised his head suddenly.

"Ahan, I know!"

"We should steam the dough first, and then press it!"

Wang Weida stood up abruptly, pacing back and forth in the laboratory, and everyone looked at him.

"Wheat noodles are sticky because wheat is rich in a sticky substance called gluten."

"When kneading the noodles, the reason why the dough should be left to rest for a while before pulling the noodles is also to allow the gluten to fully function."

"However, as a kind of starch, millet flour has no gluten protein, and the only thing that can produce stickiness in starch is gel!"

"However, the gel will only work fully when the starch in the millet is heated and gelatinized properly!"

"So if you want to shape the millet flour into noodles, you should heat and cook it first. While the dough is still hot, press the dough into noodles with a 饸饹板子."

"And when it has to be pressed out, put it in boiling water to boil, so that the millet noodles are in a high-temperature environment throughout the whole process, and the sticky substance can play a role!"

The more Wang Weida spoke, the more determined he became, the more confident he became, and the more excited he became.

Intuition told him that this idea was absolutely correct!

Chen Han's eyes also brightened, and he nodded in agreement: "It's a good direction!"

"Then let's give it a try!"

Just do it!

Chen Han grabbed another pound of unhulled millet and began to grind it by hand.

Zhuang Yunpeng and Su Sa also went to prepare the steamer.

Raw once, cooked twice, after milling and shelling millet by hand several times in a row, Chen Han can be regarded as practice makes perfect.

After a while, a large bowl of shelled and crushed millet dregs was ready.

The same is to soak it in water to make it soft, and then hammer it into dough.

The difference is that this time, after hammering the dough into dough, it was not directly placed on the bed of Hehe to press the noodles, but was steamed in a steamer first.

Since this is the first experiment, everyone does not know how long it will take to steam to make the gel in the millet dough viscous.

So everyone can only open the pot and poke the dough every 2 minutes to try the softness and stickiness.

After about 10 minutes passed, Chen Han felt that the dough had been continuously heated at high temperature, and the polymerization was sticking together.

He just put on his gloves, grabbed the dough directly from the hot steamer, and threw it into the bed next to him.

Zhuang Yunpeng, who was in charge of the Hehe bed, didn't dare to delay for a moment. While the dough was still hot, he quickly squeezed it hard.

The light yellow, smooth and springy millet noodles were squeezed out of the bed and fell into the iron pot with boiling hot water below.

"yeah!!!"

"Not broken!!"

"Hahaha!!!"

Seeing that Zhuang Yunpeng pushed out a full [-] to [-] centimeters in one breath, and threw the millet noodles without any breakpoints into the pot, everyone cheered with smiles on their faces.

Chen Han stared intently at the boiling millet noodles in the iron pot, begging silently in his heart, don't stop!

1 minutes.

2 minutes.

Just when Chen Han was so excited and wanted to shout that the experiment was successful.

There was a sound of "Bo-".

These more than a dozen noodles, each about [-] centimeters in length, snapped into two sections of about [-] centimeters.

All of a sudden, the atmosphere in the laboratory became tense, and everyone looked into the pot nervously, fearing that hope would be shattered again.

This time, though, everyone does seem to be on the right track.

After breaking once, there were noodles with a length of more than ten centimeters, and none of them broke.

After boiling the water for 5 minutes, when Chen Han picked up the bowl to scoop up all the noodles.

The smooth, springy and shiny bowl of noodles drove the entire [Re-engraved Millet Noodles Project Group] into a frenzy!

They made it!
References: Lu Houyuan, Li Yumei, Zhang Jianping, Yang Xiaoyan, Ye Maolin, Li Quan, Wang Can, Wu Naiqin. Composition analysis and reproduction of strips unearthed from the Lajia site in Qinghai 4000 years ago[J]. Science Bulletin, 2015, 60(08):744 -760.
　Volume two is about to start.

　　Give it a heads up.

　　The title of the second volume is [From a Male Corpse 2000 Years Ago].

　　Everyone should read more, don't keep books~ or you won't be able to get recommended by APP.

　　


(End of this chapter)