The mooncake skin is very soft after baking

Mooncakes are a derivative of the traditional Chinese festival Mid-Autumn Festival. Anyone who has eaten mooncakes will know that mooncakes not only have a variety of rich threads, but also have a relatively soft skin. This has led to many people liking things like mooncakes. I believe that anyone who has experience in making mooncakes will know. Mooncakes are relatively simple to make, but it is difficult to achieve the same taste as those bought on the market. The main reason is that the mooncake crust I bake myself is not as soft as the ones I buy. So how should the mooncake skin be baked to make it softer?

1. How to make the mooncake skin soft

You can use low-gluten flour. The dough made from low-gluten flour is softer, so you can slowly pat the crust with your hands so that the filling is evenly surrounded by the crust. The disadvantage is that cracks are easy to appear when baking, but the cracks will disappear after a while.

All-purpose flour can be used in moderation. If you use all-purpose flour, the dough needs to be left to stand for a longer time.

High-gluten flour should not be used because the gluten strength of the flour is too high, and the dough has great toughness and elasticity, which makes the dough easy to harden and have poor plasticity. It is easy to shrink and deform during baking, making it difficult to operate. After baking, the crust is not soft and delicate enough, and is prone to wrinkling and cracking. The pattern is not clear, the oil recovery is slow, and the gloss is poor.

2. Reasons why mooncake skin is too soft

There is actually a very complicated process involved in making mooncakes. Whether the skin is soft or not is a technical process. After the mooncake dough is baked in the oven, it is not eaten directly (the one that is eaten directly is called a sesame cake). After the mooncakes are baked, they need a process to soften and release oil. Generally, after they are naturally cooled and dried, they will be left for about 15 days. The skin will naturally soften. This process is called oil recovery.

3. How to make the mooncake skin soft: let the dough rest properly

When the dough is resting, it is fermenting. The fermentation process is the process of anaerobic respiration and reproduction of yeast. A large amount of carbon dioxide will be produced in this process, and there will be many bubbles in the dough, making it softer. Insufficient resting time will not only make the dough hard and taste bad, but also cause the baked mooncakes to have unclear patterns or even loose cakes. Leaving the dough to rest for too long will also cause it to become dry and hard. The best resting time for mooncake skin is 2.5 to 3 hours. The shortest time cannot be less than 2 hours and the longest time cannot exceed 4 hours.