In article ,
Kenneth wrote:

On Sat, 06 Jan 2007 19:10:05 -0600, Joe Doe
wrote:

In article ,


I just had some very interesting progress, though in an
unexpected direction...

I knew that if (as has happened on occasion) I forgot to
turn my mixer off, it produced dough with a very odd
"syrupy" texture. That is, the gluten's elasticity seemed
all but gone, but its extensibility remained.

I just tried that approach for the noodle dough, and indeed,
it works... almost...

It did allow me to pull 16 strands (of reasonably fine
noodles.) but then, they started to tear.


It is well known that if you overwork dough the gluten breaks down. It
is physically sheared by the mechanical action. Thus the elasticity is
gone (irreversibly). What you are trying to achieve is something
conceptually similar but chemically - i.e. the kala namak or cysteine
etc. will break down inter-strand cross-links and thus make the dough
more extensible while preserving a long gluten chain (the hope is to
have long chains with few(er) inter strand cross-links). But being
chemical the reaction is somewhat reversible.

Following up on your idea however, THERE IS an aspect to the technique
which is important in terms of mechanical development. If you notice
the pullers use a kneading action of repeatedly pulling and folding
BEFORE they actually try to pull the noodles. I believe that this
serves to align the chains into longer and longer lengths while breaking
down the inter-strand links i.e. it is a subtle manipulation to
mechanically achieve what I have described. I would roll the dough into
a long thin log, fold back on itself and repeat many times and allow the
dough to rest if necessary (maybe even over the course of a day i.e.
repeat the folding every few hours if it proves to be too elastic). I
think this will greatly help your efforts.


Roland