Contributed by Shirley
Noodles are so easy, you'll be filling the house with them!
Noodles made with all egg are extremely strong and difficult to roll
out but have this incredibly wonderful chewy texture. Noodles made
with all water are extremely tender and are sometimes called
dumplings.
I go for about 40% water to 60% egg. This gives me nice, chewy noodles that aren't incredibly difficult to roll out.
If you don't have unbleached all purpose flour, then go for unbleached bread flour rather than pastry flour. You want a flour that has a good gluten content to make good, chewy noodles. If you were making dumplings and had to make a choice, then you'd go for pastry flour to get that perfectly tender texture.
Bleached flour tastes like chemicals and is icky, in my NOT AT ALL humble opinion. Avoid if at all possible! Besides, at least here in the USA, bleached flour tends to be made of lesser quality grain, so it's already pathetic before the manufacturer does mean things to it.
Mix the eggs and 2 tablespoons of water with a fork. Then add the flour gradually, stirring with the fork. When the noodle dough is too thick to use the fork, turn out onto the kneading surface. Keep adding flour until you have a nice dough. The exact amount of flour to add is dependent on the ambient humidity, size of the eggs and who knows what all else.
Knead the dough vigorously. Mash it down, fold it over, mash it down, rotate, mash, fold, etc. For a change, pick up the lump of dough and sort of stretch out the edges to tuck them into the middle of the dough.
If you added to much flour, the dough will be too dry. When you stretch the dough out, it will break or be crumbly--what you're aiming for is a dry, satin-y dough that stretches smoothly without cracking or crumbling. Add some water by dabbing it onto the kneading surface with your fingertips. The dough will absorb the water as you knead.
Don't be too paranoid about the consistency of the dough--homemade noodles are extremely forgiving.
When the dough is nice or your arms and hands are tired, wrap the dough in a lint-free cloth that has been wrung out in cold water or in plastic wrap or foil (to prevent dehydration) and place in the fridge for anywhere from 1 hour to 2 days (noodle dough is very very forgiving).
When you are ready to roll out the dough, unwrap it and wham it down on the rolling out surface a few times. This is supposed to help break down the gluten bonds or something and make the noodle dough easier to roll out. All's fair in noodle rolling and I need all the help I can get.
Use a rolling pin to roll the dough out as thin as possible. Roll once or twice in one direction, pick up or peel up the dough and turn it for the next go with the rolling pin. The noodle dough wants to stay in a compact lump about an inch thick. You want it to be long and wide and as thin as possible. Noodle dough is very sneaky and will keep trying to shrink back into thickness whenever it can.
The dough is the right thickness when you hold it up and it's translucent. For hearty pasta like lasagna, maybe a little thicker, for delicate pasta like matchstick noodles, maybe a little thinner.
I use a rolling pizza cutter (a round metal disk with a handle) to cut noodles but I've known other people who use a sharp knife. Cut the noodles to the length and width you want.
Separate those sneaky noodles as soon as possible! Until they are dried, they want to meld back together and if you leave them together for a few minutes after cutting, they'll be well on their way to being a single piece of dough when you come back.
I lay them out on dowels or wooden kitchen spoons to keep them separated.
They can be cooked immediately or you can dehydrate them in the fridge or frozen. If you freeze them, you can put them all in one container as soon as they are frozen. If they are frozen, don't bother with thawing them out before cooking, add them to the boiling water frozen and stir frequently until they're well on the way to being done.
Fresh noodles cook very fast--maybe 4 minutes or so. Dehydrated older noodles can take a half hour. Just test for doneness as usual.
Homemade noodles are more forgiving than storeboughten ones, in my experience. They'll hover in that al dente stage for quite a few minutes before going mushy.
I've never had storeboughten noodles that have the same flavour as homemade ones. Like any food, the flavour of the cooked product is a reflection of the quality of your ingredients.
It probably took you longer to read this than it actually takes to mix up and knead the noodles--they're really not difficult at all to make and they are very forgiving and unchoosy. Not like making pastry!
And as you can probably tell from the above, there's no precision needed--the size of your eggs, how much moisture is in your flour, how strong you want the end product, all variable! It's very difficult to ruin noodles.
This page last updated 08/192003/