The year is in spring, and the day is in the morning bun.
There is a classic line in the documentary “Breakfast China”: “Just get up early and you’ll find your hometown.” The waking Time of a city is often synchronized with the breakfast stores on street corners.
The half-drawn curtain of the bun store leaks out a little bit of light, and the aroma roams around, warming the heart. The busy owners always rise at cinnabar time, roll up their sleeves and plunge into a huge flour processing feast without saying a word. The sun rises, everything is ready, these breakfast stores, but also for the whole city to send a wisp of punctual aroma.
As the city grows, convenience stores are expanding their presence in the territory of modern Life. Buying a few buns, tea eggs or portable bread from Rosen or Family on the way to work has become the optimal breakfast solution for young people today. However, whenever I sat at my workstation and ate the curry beef buns from Rosen, the meat was fragrant, the skin was fragrant, but for some reason, I always felt that it was not as fragrant as the fresh meat buns sold at the bun store in front of our local elementary school.
Until one day I got up early for my morning run and ran tirelessly to a place far from Home, and unexpectedly found a crowded bun store on the corner, with six and seven year old children carrying school bags and old people on crutches coming and going. The young people, who were always in a hurry, were now sitting calmly on small benches, enjoying the rare morning foraging time with single-mindedness. At that moment I suddenly realized that the buns at Rosen were probably no better than the meat buns I had eaten when I was a kid, and what I always missed was the city’s smoke and mirrors that I remembered from breakfast time.
01
The most vivid memory of buns when I was a kid was my mother’s phrase: “Get up early, or you won’t be able to grab Luo Ji’s water frying!” Luo Ji is a bun store downstairs from my home, the owner is originally from Shandong, a foreign country, the bun store opened for ten years, and his water pan-fried bun is also rich in Shandong Lijin characteristics: “thin skin white monk’s hat, oil seeping bun bottom is golden, fragrant inviting pedestrian steps, oil but not greasy taste beautiful.”
The color and aroma are so good that the store is always full of customers. In the morning, the store is basically sold out before ten o’clock, so it seems that early rising is the best way to enjoy the delicacy.
Every pan of buns is a battle without smoke and mirrors, with hungry wolves waiting for the moment when the boss opens the lid, holding plastic bags and small plates.
“I want five!”
“Give me nine!”
“Boss fill me up with ten!”
I was always drowned out by all the voices, or maybe I was too short to be seen by the boss, so no matter how early I went, I never got the right to speak about the first pan of pancakes. But I always reassured myself that I was a child and my voice was not loud, so I could not buy the first pan.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t get the first pot, but it was healing and happy to see the process of making pan-fried dumplings in the pan. The buns are bigger than the pancake pans, and the folds are open to the side, and the filling is thick and fluffy.
The owner puts a small amount of oil in the pan and arranges the buns neatly in the pan, just like serious children sitting in rows and lifting their heads in class. The buns are half-boiled and half-steamed until the outer skin of the buns becomes fat and large and the water in the pot boils dry. Mature buns will be packed together because of the dough. When the pan is shoveled, a round, fat white bun with a golden straw hat falls in line, fresh from the oven.
The puff pastry is as thin as a cicada, and the filling is a magical kaleidoscope of onion, meat, and sometimes the unique aroma of wild vegetables and shiitake mushrooms, all in one. The taste is rich and full, and the aroma is long.
02
But to go back to my memory of my favorite bun, of course, is exclusively for the benefit of the sweet tooth – rushy bun. At this point, I have to mention the most representative bun giants in the Canton morning tea: the flow of sand buns and barbecued pork buns.
In the early years of living in a small town, the imagination of the two bun giants, always stuck in the song of the little piggy on the other side of the river animation, called McDull’s piggy always cheerfully sang: “Big bag more whole two cages, big bag more whole two cages.”
Until recent years out of work, in the mind of the fantasy picture of the Canton bun giant, only really landed. At that time, just off the plane, the first stop will go to the authentic Canton tea restaurant located in Guangzhou Beijing Road – the point of all the de, ordered a Phoenix runny sand bun and a honey baked bun. The first time I ate, the taste buds are simply stunning, I realized why McDull always want two more cages, but also “not afraid of stagnation (not afraid to hold up)”.
The bun is full of fragrance, rich milk sweetness, mixed with the taste of salted egg yolk, lips and teeth before cutting into the core, golden sand will be steaming hot Milky flow, taste saturated, full of weight. When you tear open the white jade-like skin of the bun, a golden sand trails out, and the fine, thick, meandering texture of the sand depends on the ratio of sugar, butter and salted egg yolk. In the traditional recipe, 20% salted egg yolk, 20% butter and 60% powdered sugar are the important keys to the formation of the quicksand effect. The texture of runny sand, the color of creamy yolk, and the taste of sweetness always make sweet-loving diners linger.
The more famous barbecue pork bun is named after the special barbecue pork meat filling. Folk have a classic description of the “body” of barbecue pork buns: “tall body bird cage type, large belly to receive Duk, burst mouth and only slightly exposed filling.” Unlike the army of dead dough (unfermented dough) in the bun skin, barbecued pork buns are made with fermented dough, and the fermented dough of barbecued pork buns is improved to be pinched into a birdcage shape when wrapped, and after proper fermentation, the top of the bun naturally cracks from the head, resembling a flowering steamed bun.
The soul of BBQ pork bun is the special filling, soft and smooth bun skin, with fatty and lean BBQ pork as filling, slices as the size of a fingernail, grease uniform, fatty flavor. Slightly torn open, the BBQ pork filling poured out, oozing out a burst of BBQ pork flavor. After steaming, open the whole package, smooth and juicy, sweet and salty, one bite can feel the full flavor of meat inside. The perfect fusion of barbecue and sauce, fatty but not greasy, unique flavor, to make the magical taste of melting in the mouth, endless aftertaste.
03
As the leader of the north-south breakfast industry in China, the bun is round-headed, simple, and most soothing. It is like a magical kaleidoscope, combining the fresh seasonality of different cities and time zones into a dry bag made of white dough.
The local Food lovers have taken the local ingredients and adapted them to the local conditions, combining the Chinese ingredients with ingenuity and flavor, creating a prosperous picture of the blossoming of various buns in the motherland. The simple combination of bun skin and filling, such as fried bun, small dumpling bun, crab bun, dunked bun, broken crispy bun, baked bun ……, changes into hundreds of flavors because of the development or not of the dough, the distinction and mixture of oil and water, the special or normal filling, the pleated or unpleated shape, and the cooking method of frying, steaming, and baking. –As the saying goes, “one side of the land raises one side of the bun”.
As we grow older and farther away from home, it may be more difficult to reproduce the taste and flavor of the bun store we ate as children, which is engraved with the memory of home. The human fireworks, the most caress the hearts of mortals. Early morning busy bun store in the warmth of the fireworks, bringing us not only the taste directly to the tongue of the soft and sweet, but also the bottom of the heart steamed up with tenderness and touch.
So the next time you go out to buy breakfast, don’t always go to the convenience store, try to find a steaming breakfast store in the corner of your home, buy a round, hot buns, wake up a day full of vitality.
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