Gold leaf has been widely known for centuries because of its contribution to the world of culinary arts. It is one of the best tools that are used to decorate pastries, cakes and other exquisite desserts during festivities and other occasions.
But have you ever wondered how it was created?
This article will give you knowledge about how gold leaf is made. Below shows the step by step process of manufacturing gold leaf.
1. Gold Melting
The proportioned gold is first put under very high temperature to melt and transform it into a gold bar.
2. Pressing The Gold Bar
When gold bars are formed, they are now pressed into the machine to become thin gold belts. These belts are cut to make thin paper which will also be divided into smaller parts.
3. Cutting of The Belt
The belt is now divided into equal parts with the same weight. To make sure that the division the belt is equal, a certain machine is used to cut it. The squares that are created out of the belt must have a measurement of 90 x 95 mm. This process must be done meticulously to ensure proper length and width. After this, the square will be divided into wads composed of 144 pieces.
4. Soften The Pieces of Gold
For the pieces of gold to soften, they undergo the heating treatment system.
5. Hammering Stage
The softened gold pieces are now hammered by the workers. This is done in three intervals to transform the gold pieces into gold leaves which are 120 x 120 mm in length and 0.025 – 0.028 mm in width.
6. Cutting The Gold Leaf
When the appropriate width and length are achieved, they will now be cut manually to form edible gold leaves. Each of the gold leaf is cut into 16 tiny pieces with 30 x 30 mm which is regarded as spills.
7. Incubate
To ensure that the spills will expand quickly, a piece of gold paper (with 10 cm) which will be used to layer the spills is incubated.
8. Layering
When the incubation process is done, the spills will now be put in the black gold paper which has the measurement of 100 x 100 mm. This is commonly referred to as ‘Kaizi’.
9. The Heating Process
Now that all of the spills are layered with Kaizi, they will now undergo the heating process. This electric furnace is done to ensure that the gold leaves will not be negatively affected by the temperature in the outside world.
10. Hammering
This hammering process will be done by a machine for 3000 times. After the process, the small spills will now be turned into bigger sizes.
11. 2nd Layering
After the hammering, Kaizi will now have the second layering. A black paper measuring 195 x 195 mm will be used to layer them. Kaizi will be wrapped using black gold paper and when done, they will now be put in a craft paper bag.
12. Redo The Hammering Process
The craft paper bag will be hammered by a machine again and again until the desired result is achieved. After this, the wrapper will be removed to discharge the heat caused by the hammering process.
When it is already cool, it must be rewrapped and put under the hammering process again. This will be done until gold leaves have expanded and turned into foils with 200 x 200 mm added with workmanship.
13. he Papering
The workers will now remove the gold foils from the wrapper. They are going to arrange them into a pile, put them into the square paper and make several sets having 100 pieces each.
14. Inspection
The finished products will now be inspected. The excellently made products are the only ones which will be tied into ten sets and wrapped. Then, they will be put in a plastic, sealed and preserved.
Making gold leaf is indeed difficult, but surely the efforts of the workers will not be put to waste because these things have been widely known to perfectly decorate different delicacies all over the world.
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