And whether it was wheat, glutinous rice, flour, or cornmeal, they were all grains.
Thus, the four of them went to the rice shop on the next street.
The people here did not know the theory behind the production of malt sugar. They only knew how to do it. However, Jiang Yue knew that after the wheat germinated, it would produce a type of malt enzyme. This enzyme could decompose the starch in glutinous rice into malt sugar.
Therefore, they needed to buy wheat to germinate the candy.
They also had to buy glutinous rice.
However, because this was the South, most of the crops were rice and not wheat. The wheat had to be transported from the North, so wheat and flour were quite expensive here.
In the North, one could buy half a kilogram of wheat for ten coins, and in the South, it was about fifteen coins.
The flour was made from wheat, so it was even more expensive. In any case, it was more expensive than rice powder.
Jiang Yue decided to buy rice flour instead of flour to prevent the sugar cubes from sticking together.
However, rice flour was also twenty coins per half a kilogram. Because it was manually ground or animal-powered, it had to be first removed to become polished rice and then ground into flour. It took a lot of effort, and there were no machines in this world.
Due to the low production of glutinous rice, few people planted it, so the price was high. It was 30 coins per 500 grams.
No matter what it was, in this town, the lowest selling price was 600 grams.
If you buy 300 grams, they won’t sell it to you at all.
Originally, Jiang Yue planned to buy 1200 grams of glutinous rice, a little wheat, and a few cornmeal. This was because the ratio of glutinous rice to barley for the authentic recipe of malt candy was 40 to one.
This way, the cost would be lower.
However, this was not the fully automated sugar-making process in her original world, where the fermentation temperature and proportion were controlled to the most appropriate range. It was all manually controlled. In order to ensure full fermentation and to achieve the ideal sugar output as much as possible, the amount of malt needed to be more. The proportion could be ten to one, one to eight, or four to one. The proportion could be changed anyway.
It was all because the amount of malt used was less than glutinous rice.
There must not be more malt than glutinous rice, or else the malt sugar made would be sour.
In fact, rice could be used to make malt sugar instead of glutinous rice, but the amount of starch in glutinous rice was higher than that in rice. Moreover, the malt sugar made from glutinous rice would taste better.
With that in mind, Jiang Yue said to the owner of the rice shop, “One thousand two hundred grams of glutinous rice, 600 grams of wheat, and 600 grams of cornmeal please.”
At that time, she would not need so much wheat and rice flour. She had no choice.
“Alright,” The owner of the rice shop hurriedly asked the waiter to weigh it. “That’s ninety-five coins in total.”
Jiang Yue was quite glad that Xue Yifu and Li Hehua paid for the wontons and the ox cart just now. Otherwise, how could she and Xue Yan have enough money?
It was her fault for not thinking it through. She didn’t expect that no matter what kind of food they bought in this town, they would have to buy more.
Xue Yan took out his money bag and was about to pay.
“Do you guys have enough money?” Xue Yifu and Li Hehua also took out their money bags, afraid that they would not have enough money, so they gave them some.
“We have enough,” said Xue Jie.
After giving out the money, there were only five coins left in Xue Yan’s purse.
Jiang Yue looked at Xue Yan’s purse which had deflated. If one didn’t look carefully, they wouldn’t know that there were five coins inside.
Xue Yan looked at her.
Jiang Yue coughed dryly, which was a rare occurrence, and said to him uneasily, “We’d better ask your mother for some money to keep with us.”
Although she didn’t feel like she needed money, she still needed to buy something sometimes.