Doi Village belongs to Dong Hai commune, Quynh Phu district, Thai Binh province. What creates the unique appearance of this village is the rows of white-covered rice paper in the whole area. People here have been involved in making rice paper for many decades century.
The secret to creating delicious rice paper</p >
To understand the rice cake production process of Dai village, we went to the family of Mr. Hoang Pho Ung and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Luyen, who have had nearly 40 years of experience with the profession.
Mr. Ung shares the traditional way of making banh dat in Doi village. It takes many steps and takes time to produce the finished product.
The first step is washing and soaking the rice. The rice is then ground into flour and rolled into cakes using a semi-automatic machine. The baking process requires at least four workers. Normally one person will mix the dough and adjust the kitchen temperature, one person will serve, one person will cut the cake and one person will dry it.
< p>Dried rice paper is peeled off the sheet to move to the incubation stage to soften. Then the cake is sliced by machine. The thickness of the cake fibers depends on the customer’s needs. Usually there are three types of small fibers: medium rice noodles used as ingredients for fish soup for dry rice noodles and large ones used to eat hot pot.
“After being sliced, the cake will be dried again to dry and harden, then packaged and distributed to different places. Banh Da village has been famous for a long time. It’s made, consumed, and exported. everywhere in the country and even abroad” Mr. Ung shared.
When When asked about the secret to making delicious rice paper, Mr. Ung said: “The first important job is to choose rice. To make the noodles delicious and crispy, we use solid rice like Q5. Next, the rice must be washed, soaked thoroughly, and ground into a fine powder to make the rice cake beautiful. Rice cakes are only made from rice and clean water without preservatives to ensure safety and hygiene.”
“Dry in the sun and rain” with cakes</p >
Thanks to persistently pursuing the profession of making rice paper, many households in Doi village have a prosperous life, earning tens to hundreds of millions of dong each month. Many people also call this “millionaire village”.
Mrs. Luyen said that every day her family grinds 3 quintals of rice to yield 2 to 9 quintals of dry rice cakes. With a selling price of 18,000-20,000 VND/kg, she and her husband earn about 20,000 VND/kg. 1 million/day. This is also the income of the majority of people here.
However, to have such an income, households working in the rice paper industry in Doi village have to trade many hardships. Ms. Luy confided that making rice paper brings a stable income, but the work is very hard. In the morning, she and her husband have to get up from 4 a.m. to work until 7 p.m. to complete the day’s work.
< p>”Our work also depends on the weather, observing all day to see if it’s sunny or rainy. When it’s sunny, you have to pick it up quickly because otherwise the cake will break. You have to be careful when it rains. If you don’t move in quickly, the cake will be ruined. The most miserable thing is on rainy days when the cakes don’t dry until 12 o’clock at night,” Ms. Luyen added.
Mr. Nguyen Dang Tham, a worker for Luyen’s family, said: “There were days when all the cakes were dried. Then there was a big storm and the rice paper was blown away into the river and fields. That batch of cakes is considered waste.”
It is also because of those hardships that many households have to give up the job of making rice cakes as their children grow older or become economists. The family is better off.
< strong>Breaking through thanks to modern machinery
The hardship of Mr. Ung and Mrs. Luyen… is a common story of most people working here. However, with the innovation of enterprising thinking, some households have invested in high-tech rice paper production “machines” to help increase productivity and reduce risks compared to the old way.
We found Mr. Nguyen Dang’s facility Eleven of the 7 leading facilities in the production of rice paper by machine Large industry in Doi village. Mr. Muoi’s factory has an area of about 560m2 including a closed complex of machinery lines. Mr. Muoi said the production here still follows the steps in the traditional process. The biggest difference is that there are machines involved in many stages but still retains the “quality” of Lang Doi rice paper.
A typical example is the drying stage. Previously, cakes had to be dried in the sun, but when produced by industrial machines, the cakes are dried right at the factory through a steam dryer. “Thanks to this technology, the production of rice paper is less difficult. In addition, drying the cake in a closed space also helps the product quality to be more hygienic,” Mr. Muoi said.
Productivity when working with industrial machines also increases significantly. According to Mr. Muoi, if you did it manually, you could only make 2-3 quintals of bread/day. However, now that number has increased to 2 tons. With the selling price unchanged compared to regular products, the daily revenue at Mr. Muoi’s factory can reach tens of millions of dong.
To achieve such impressive numbers, Mr. Muoi said he invested Investing more than 2 billion VND for the factory area. Despite limited financial resources, Mr. Muoi still decided to spend money to buy a machine because he realized that if technology develops, it will meet the needs of the market and bring adequate income.
At Wait village now has 53 large and small scale production lines. On average, nearly 25 tons of finished rice cakes are produced every day. For the villagers, making rice paper is not only a profession to make a living but also a personal pride passed down through generations.
Khiem Nguyen
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