Why are fried fritters all fried together?

After eating fried dough sticks for so many years, everyone knows that fried dough sticks are fried together, but do you know why? When waiting in line to buy breakfast in the morning, someone asked the breakfast chef: Why do you want to stick two noodles together and fry them? The answer I got surprised me: two fried dough sticks were fried together because the fried dough sticks alone could not expand!

Yu Zi Sankop, a master of food science: When the oil temperature is high, the surface contacting with the oil will solidify rapidly to prevent expansion, while the soft and amorphous contact surface between two fried dough sticks can expand outward continuously, so the expansion effect will be better if the two surfaces are put together. When the oil temperature is low, a single fried dough stick can fully expand before the outer layer hardens.

There is also an allusion to fried dough sticks. It is recorded in "Qing Li Banknotes" that fried dough sticks are called "fried dough sticks" in many places: "Fried dough sticks can be as long as one person, and two pieces are twisted into one piece. If the rope is blown up, it will look like a human figure at first, second-hand, two-legged ... Song people hate Qin Gui's wrong country. Therefore, it is speculated that fried dough sticks originated in the Qin Gui era, that is, the Southern Song Dynasty. In the historical evolution of fried dough sticks production, fried dough sticks have many names. Some are called "fried fruit" or "fruit", while others are called "snail gold". During the Xianfeng period, Zhang Linxi's Trivial Notes even sorted out the names of deep-fried dough sticks everywhere: "Deep-fried dough sticks are like freezers, and all provinces in the north and south eat this snack, or fruit, or oil embryo, while in Henan, they are called sesame sugar oil buns, that is, fried ghosts in Beijing. "Fried dough sticks were in Beijing at that time, and they were called' fried ghosts'.

The reason why the fried dough sticks can expand is that the leavening agent added in the fried dough sticks will have a chemical reaction, releasing a large amount of carbon dioxide and ammonia in an instant, which makes the fried dough sticks expand in just a few seconds and finally solidify. Although the taste of ammonia will make people uncomfortable, because ammonia is soluble in water, there is less ammonia in fried dough sticks. When gas is generated, the expansion of dough depends on the elasticity and ductility of gluten in it. Gluten is the water-insoluble protein in flour. Making deep-fried dough sticks requires especially malleable flour, because they need to be elongated before being put into the pot to increase the heating area.

⑥ In addition, you should be careful at every step in the process of making fried dough sticks. She said that if you accidentally press the edge of the dough piece when stretching it before cooking, it will affect the final expansion effect of the fritters. In the frying process, the chef also needs to turn the fried dough sticks constantly to make the dough pieces heated evenly to ensure a good appearance.