Chapter 29 Gray Flour

That evening, when Qin Huai’s family of four gathered around a small table by the first-floor window to eat stir-fried dishes with buckwheat buns, Zhao Rong couldn’t hold back and once again criticized Qin Congwen for what he had said in the afternoon.

This time, Qin Huai heard everything—and even heard an exaggerated, embellished version of it.

As Qin Congwen’s good son, Qin Huai felt the need to defend his father’s cooking skills.

“Mom, actually Dad’s skills are average, but they’re not so bad that the buns are inedible. The reason the buns weren’t tasty back then might be…”

“Because the batch of flour Dad bought cheaply was too poor in quality.”

Hearing Qin Huai speak up for him, Qin Congwen was so moved that tears almost welled up. After all these years, someone was finally speaking on his behalf.

He nodded repeatedly in strong agreement. “Yes, yes! That pockmarked flour seller should be locked up for ten or eight years. He claimed his family had someone sick and urgently needed money, so he sold me a large batch of flour at a low price, insisting it was high-quality white flour with no quality issues at all. I felt sorry for him and agreed.”

“But what kind of ‘high-quality white flour’ was that? It was pure gray flour—more authentic than the gray flour I ate as a child. That guy must have had a really black heart. If he had just sifted the flour, he wouldn’t have dared to sell me that stuff.”

Zhao Rong said irritably, “You still have the nerve to say that. You didn’t even check the goods when buying. The top layer was white flour, but underneath was all gray flour. You had already been running a business for so many years at that point—how could you still be fooled by such a simple trick?”

“Even after being cheated, if you had just admitted it and moved on, that would’ve been fine. But you couldn’t bear to waste that batch of flour and insisted on making those damn buckwheat buns. You scared away all the neighbors and nearly shut the shop down!”

“Mom, what exactly is gray flour?” Qin Luo asked curiously. “Brother, do you know?”

Qin Huai shook his head.

“It’s flour ground coarsely without being sifted, including the bran. That’s what your dad and I used to eat when we were young,” Zhao Rong explained.

Seeing that Zhao Rong’s explanation wasn’t detailed enough, Qin Congwen added, “The flour you eat nowadays is refined flour. Back then, conditions were poor, so everything was ground together. Even cornmeal was ground with the cob included.”

“When flour is ground together with the bran, its color turns gray, so it’s called gray flour. If it’s even rougher—mixing buckwheat flour in—it becomes black flour. The buns made from that are much rougher than today’s buckwheat buns. They’re really coarse—if your throat is narrow, you even need water to swallow them.”

“The gray flour your mom mentioned was actually considered fine grain by our standards. The gray flour sold back then was often wheat flour mixed with buckwheat flour, making it even grayer than properly milled flour.”

“Do you remember that Grandma Zhang who lived diagonally across from your grandpa’s house? According to seniority, you should call her Seventh Aunt. She married from Shanxi Province, and the noodles she made were incredibly fragrant.”

“Every year during the New Year, she would make noodles from gray flour and add an egg. Her son would sit at the doorway eating those noodles—enough to make countless kids drool.”

Qin Luo stared at her father and asked a soul-searching question: “So Dad, did you crave them?”

Qin Congwen said he couldn’t remember whether he craved them or not—but right now, he felt like hitting a child.

Ignoring her father’s response, Qin Luo turned to Qin Huai and asked, “Brother, I think what Dad described just now sounds good. Can you make gray flour noodles for me tomorrow?”

Qin Huai: “?”

Zhao Rong tapped Qin Luo’s hand with her chopsticks. “Don’t listen to your dad’s nonsense. Back then, we had no choice but to eat whatever we could get. Anything with white flour already felt like a treat. Besides, where would you even buy gray flour now? Should we have your dad go find that old scammer and buy another batch?”

Qin Congwen felt that it was fine to scold him, but there was no need to keep dragging him down.

He stubbornly argued, “Not necessarily. Gray flour can also be made delicious. If you go further back, even landlords couldn’t afford white flour when they were young. Didn’t my father always say? The landlord in our village went bankrupt and became a poor peasant because he loved white buns so much—eating them every meal until he lost all his wealth.”

“Luoluo, Dad will try to get your grandfather to find some gray flour in the countryside. In a while, I’ll make gray flour noodles for you!”

Qin Luo: “……”

Dad, I actually want to eat the ones made by my brother.

As a considerate daughter, Qin Luo swallowed her inner thoughts along with her bun.

In the following days, Qin Huai continued making buckwheat buns.

The discussion about gray flour during dinner reminded him that buckwheat buns didn’t have to strictly use white flour mixed with buckwheat—they could incorporate other types of flour as well.

Qin Huai experimented with all kinds of mixtures, even adding dough made from boiled elm bark water. He turned the buckwheat bun process into something like an innovation contest, but still couldn’t produce Chen Huihui’s “dream bun.”

Just as Qin Huai was considering whether to obtain some retro-style gray flour with bran or even pure cornmeal ground with corn cobs included—to give Chen Huihui a “coarse grain shock”—the gray flour from Grandpa Qin finally arrived.

Qin Congwen had indeed called home and asked Grandpa Qin to prepare some gray flour, intending to make gray flour noodles for Qin Luo to “remember hardship and appreciate sweetness.”

Upon learning that Qin Congwen had managed to obtain such nostalgic, old-fashioned ingredients, even Chen Huihong came over to watch. She scooped up a handful of gray flour, feeling its texture, and sighed that she hadn’t seen this stuff in many years—it was something she had only eaten in her childhood.

To celebrate Qin Luo’s upcoming “experience of hardship,” Qin Huai decided to pause the buckwheat bun tastings for a day so that Chen Huihui could also try Qin Congwen’s cooking and see that his buckwheat buns were actually quite good.

Qin Congwen was capable of making handmade noodles.

His skills were decent—reportedly learned from Grandma Zhang. When he apprenticed, he even paid a jug of oil, thirty eggs, and a whole old hen as tuition. With such generous payment, she taught him everything without holding anything back.

The Qin family breakfast shop had been able to get started largely because Qin Congwen’s noodles were passable. However, once egg noodles became popular, his handmade noodles were no longer cost-effective compared to cheaper options, so the shop eventually shifted to selling only buns instead of noodles.

Today, Qin Congwen felt it was time to show his true skills.

In the kitchen, he kneaded the dough with great enthusiasm.

Outside the kitchen, everyone waiting for the legendary gray flour noodles was equally excited.

Chen Huihong, now financially independent and able to look back calmly on her past hardships, was delighted to have the chance to reminisce about tough times.

Zhao Rong, who had almost forgotten that her husband still had this noodle-making skill, was happily thinking that if the gray flour noodles turned out well, they could have him make handmade noodles in the mornings to earn a bit more.

Qin Luo, who had never eaten them before and was eager to try, was full of anticipation.

Qin Huai, also unfamiliar with gray flour and curious whether its texture could be used for buckwheat buns, shared the same expectations.

Chen Huihui, who had been eating buns for many consecutive days and was in urgent need of something different, was especially happy.

Even Ou Yang, who had come over midway to join the fun and was ready to eat as much as possible since it was free, was poised and ready.

Under everyone’s expectant gazes, Qin Congwen skillfully added the noodles into the pot, brimming with confidence.

It had been many years since he had felt the experience of everyone waiting for his cooking.

He really hadn’t aged at all—still sharp as ever, haha!