Does anybody have a good detailed recipe of both ingredients and
technique for making hand pulled noodles?

Roland

Joe Doe > wrote:
> Does anybody have a good detailed recipe of both ingredients and
> technique for making hand pulled noodles?
>
I have recipes for Thai Guayteow and Japanes Udon,
but neither is hand-pulled. Sorry for no help.

--
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their families:
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In article >,
wrote:

> Joe Doe > wrote:
> > Does anybody have a good detailed recipe of both ingredients and
> > technique for making hand pulled noodles?
> >
> I have recipes for Thai Guayteow and Japanes Udon,
> but neither is hand-pulled. Sorry for no help.

If it is not too much bother could you post these or direct me to a
source.

I watched an episode on Simply Ming where he visits with a hand pulled
noodle shop in Boston. I recorded this so have a vague idea on recipe
and technique. A Chinese students claims her father would use 100% oil
for the dough. The chef on Ming did not do this. He used mainly water
but at some stage he could have rubbed some oil into the dough. Making
a dough that is this stretchable and not elastic probably needs some
shortening.

I would love to give it a shot but it seems hard to do and I would be
reluctant to try without a known good recipe.

Roland

Joe Doe > wrote:
> wrote:
> > Joe Doe > wrote:
> > > Does anybody have a good detailed recipe of both ingredients and
> > > technique for making hand pulled noodles?
> > >
> > I have recipes for Thai Guayteow and Japanes Udon,
> > but neither is hand-pulled. Sorry for no help.
>
> If it is not too much bother could you post these or direct me to a
> source.
>
Here's the Thai Guaytio recipe. I'll try to post the one for the Udon in a
few days.

Guaytio (Fresh Thai Rice Noodles)

Makes 1 pound

Ingredients:

1-1/4 cups UNcooked long-grain rice
1-1/4 cups water

Vegetable oil

Procedu

1. Soak the rice overnight in the water. Then grind the rice and water in a
blender (NOT a food processor) for 5 or 10 minutes 'til it's formed a
smooth, thin batter. Better too smooth than not smooth enough!

2. Lightly coat an 8" x 8" x 2" baking pan with oil and heat it in a
steamer for around 3 minutes. Pour in 1/2 cup batter in an even layer and
replace the steamer lid. Steam for 5 minutes. From this point on, check
periodically to make sure there's water in the steamer, adding as needed.

3. After 5 minutes, lightly coat the top of the first layer with vegetable
oil and pour 1/2 cup of batter on top of it in an even layer and replace
the steamer lid. Steam for 5 minutes. Repeat with remaining batter. After
adding the last layer, steam for 8 minutes. When sliced, the layers will
separate into thin noodles.

From my Thai Cooking Bible, when Jun's not home (and five years before I
met her): "Thai Home Cooking from Kamolmal's Kitchen."

--
Nick. Support severely wounded and disabled War on Terror Veterans and
their families:
http://saluteheroes.org/ & http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/

Thank a Veteran and Support Our Troops. You are not forgotten. Thanks ! ! !

"Joe Doe" > wrote in message
...
<snip>
> A Chinese students claims her father would use 100% oil
> for the dough.

That would be for the oily fresh noodles, those are slightly more yellow in
colour & contains eggs.

> The chef on Ming did not do this. He used mainly water
> but at some stage he could have rubbed some oil into the dough. Making
> a dough that is this stretchable and not elastic probably needs some
> shortening.

That would be the more common La Mein (pulled noodles), i don't recall any
shortening in it but i could be wrong, it's mainly water & flour & the skill
is in the kneading & pulling. For DimSum dough... flour mixture is poured
into boiling hot water to create a sticky mixture before it is rolled out.
That provides the elasticity.

> I would love to give it a shot but it seems hard to do and I would be
> reluctant to try without a known good recipe.

my advice would be to go learn from a chef, it's too intricate a procedure
to learn yourself.

DC. (who has made a mess of fresh La Mein before... never again!)

"DC." > wrote in message
...
> "Joe Doe" > wrote in message
> ...
> <snip>
>> A Chinese students claims her father would use 100% oil
>> for the dough.
>
> That would be for the oily fresh noodles, those are slightly more yellow
> in
> colour & contains eggs.
>
>> The chef on Ming did not do this. He used mainly water
>> but at some stage he could have rubbed some oil into the dough. Making
>> a dough that is this stretchable and not elastic probably needs some
>> shortening.
>
> That would be the more common La Mein (pulled noodles), i don't recall any
> shortening in it but i could be wrong, it's mainly water & flour & the
> skill
> is in the kneading & pulling. For DimSum dough... flour mixture is poured
> into boiling hot water to create a sticky mixture before it is rolled out.
> That provides the elasticity.
>

I would imagine that you would have to use oil to at least coat the roll
before you pull it for the first time. Otherwise, the noodles will stick
together when you double them up.

GregoryD

I highly recommend a book (I believe it is out of print, but perhaps you can
find it online):
_Florence Lin's Complete Book of Chinese Noodles, Dumplings and Breads_

by Florence Lin (Quill, William Morrow, New York: 1986)



She gives two recipes for hand-pulled noodles:



Dragon's Beard Noodles or Pull Noodles

Long Xu Mian or La Mian

(which after 10 pulls becomes 2,048 strands)



and

Pull Noodles (Simple Version)

La Mian



Dragon's Beard are made with a combination of unbleached flour and bread
flour and cold water making a very soft dough. The dough is let sit for 4
hours to soften the gluten, then baking powder and salt are mixed in and
them pulled. She gives instructions to fry these noodles.



The simple pull noodles are boiled and are a simple dough of flour and cold
water and a little salt. She boils these noodles.



Looks like the basic format is develop the gluten well, then let dough
relax. Pull.



This books has wonderful recipes for any noodle/bread you can think of
including dumplings, pancakes, rice noodles, deep fried devils, buns, New
Year's Cakes, etc.

Lara Burton wrote:
> by Florence Lin (Quill, William Morrow, New York: 1986)

> Dragon's Beard are made with a combination of unbleached flour and bread
> flour and cold water making a very soft dough. The dough is let sit for 4
> hours to soften the gluten, then baking powder and salt are mixed in

that sounds very suspect; baking powder is a very recent introduction
to Chinese cooking.

I did some searching in Chinese on the web but could not come up with a
recipe. The closest one was "add two handfuls of flour to a pot of cold
water".
Mix and let rest for two hours. Then roll into a long strip, brush
liberally with oil, let rest for 15 minutes (by coiling it into a
bowl). Then start pulling.

One website offers a 10 day course in making pulled noodles in China.

>She gives two recipes for hand-pulled noodles:


Dragon's Beard Noodles or Pull Noodles


Long Xu Mian or La Mian


(which after 10 pulls becomes 2,048 strands)


HAND PULLED NOODLES


There is a scanned recipe from this site for the Dragion's beard hand
pulled noodles.
Which takes some time to download but looks like a respectable recipe.

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum....ab-chinesefood
The steps are graphically shown in this ;
http://chinesefood.about.com/gi/dyna...handnoodle.htm

if you have difficulty opening the links start from here
http://chinesefood.about.com/library/blnoodlemonth.htm

and click on the link on Famous Hand Pulled Noodles
Roy.

In article .com>,
wrote:

>
> There is a scanned recipe from this site for the Dragion's beard hand
> pulled noodles.
> Which takes some time to download but looks like a respectable recipe.
>
> http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum....webtag=ab-chin
> esefood
> The steps are graphically shown in this ;
> http://chinesefood.about.com/gi/dyna...www.saturdayma
> rket.com/chinabreakfast/handnoodle.htm
>
> if you have difficulty opening the links start from here
> http://chinesefood.about.com/library/blnoodlemonth.htm
>
> and click on the link on Famous Hand Pulled Noodles
> Roy.


Thanks to all for the suggestions and leads - looks promising. The Lin
book is indeed out of print and $$ from online book sellers. I have
reserved a copy from my local library before I commit.

In my searches I stumbled on an interesting site:

http://www.melcherruwart.com/Pages/Noodles.htm

This guy has the inside track and reveals a "secret sauce" and technique
tips.

If you have a chance Roy could you take a peak - he claims the chef
added a sulfur smelling powder (sea salt? or?) which made the dough very
stretchable. I suspect it is some kind of dough relaxer. Can you think
of some easily available (to the home cook) relaxers to try?

I know Laura Brody sells some relaxer (supposedly all natural) - can you
take a guess at what the common "natural" relaxing ingredients may be? I
might buy hers and give it a try.

I presume there must be some relaxer because in this web site the guy
says that you could knead and repull repeatedly instantly - normal dough
would behave differently under these conditions it would behave
elastically (i.e. try to pull back) - it would need time to relax to
resist this.

Roland

Joe Doe wrote:
> In article .com>,
> wrote:
>

>
> This guy has the inside track and reveals a "secret sauce" and technique
> tips.
>
> If you have a chance Roy could you take a peak - he claims the chef
> added a sulfur smelling powder (sea salt? or?) which made the dough very
> stretchable. I suspect it is some kind of dough relaxer. Can you think
> of some easily available (to the home cook) relaxers to try?
>
> I know Laura Brody sells some relaxer (supposedly all natural) - can you
> take a guess at what the common "natural" relaxing ingredients may be? I
> might buy hers and give it a try.
>
>> Roland

Roland the likely sulfurous smelling relaxant is sodium metabisulfite
which is cheap and L -cysteine an amino acid which is expensive.
Buit if it's a salt its nothing else but sodium
metabisulfite(Na2S2O5 or called in the food additives code as E223
http://www.basf.de/en/produkte/chemi...iuup7GP7bsf4Cu

Glutathione from dead yeast can also relax the dough

Now Laura Brody page states about the dough relaxer., lets analyzes
what is responsible for relaxation effect. This topic is more suited to
the baking group as that was where the product was destined for but let
us see if it works with noodles.

The four components of Brody's dough relaxer a

High heat Milk solids non fat( skim milk) which tends to tighten the
gluten due to calcium binding of the milk components with the gluten
modifying the protein conformation.

Diastatic malt- contains amylase and protease; the latter is
responsible for dough relaxing effect as it chemically interacts with
the serine part of the polypeptide chain ( the malt protease is
classified as serine protease ) loosening it. Brody did not mention
this enzyme as that is the trade secret of his dough enhancer! yes
protease is a natural relaxant as its a proteolytic enzyme!

Natural sours- it can contain lactic and acetic acid which can allow
the gluten to relax by acidifying the protein structure breaking the
intermolecular protein bonds in the tertiary protein structure reducing
the tightness of the gluten; it also contribute to dough relaxation

Baking powder- the baking powder can contain an alkali and acid and
that will loosen up the dough structure or its just a baking soda which
interact with sours. But it is inert and does nothing to relax the
bread dough
Now if we consider these components theortically they act in tandem or
synergistically with each other contributing to dough relaxation .
But how I see it the diastatic malt that is specially sslected to
have higher ratio of protease with respect to amylase is the
significant dough relaxant.in Brody dough relaxant!. The rest are just
there to mask the identity of the active ingredient.
It was the same technique used by R.K. Duncan in the early 1900's in
the creation of the first yeast food. Arkady.
They hid the potassium bromate among the other ingredients such as the
salt, gypsum and ammonium chloride and fillers.

However by looking at the ingredient declaration that dough relaxant is
suited only for bread dough and not for pasta dough like noodles.
But if you re interested to play with it you can buy it and see if it
works with noodles, but in my experience with such dough relaxant the
best are the sodium metabisulfite and L -cysteine is the most
effective. These former is used by biscuit manufacturer to prevent the
crackers and biscuits from shrinking and enable them to use only a
limited flour type for all their cookie and cracker manufacturing
needs.
The latter( L- cysteine) is used in top quality bread improver to
shorten the dough mixing time by nearly half. but is the most potent
dough relaxant as it requries only 20-40 milligram of per kilogram of
it to relax the flour while a larger amount of sodium metabisulfite is
needed for the same effect.
Roy

In article . com>,
wrote:

> Joe Doe wrote:
> > In article .com>,
>
> > If you have a chance Roy could you take a peak - he claims the chef
> > added a sulfur smelling powder (sea salt? or?)

Ooops I meant "black salt" or "kala namak" - I know it has a strong
hydrogen sulfide smell but have not been able to find its chemical
composition. I was wondering if it had naturally a suitable amount of
relaxant.


>
> Roland the likely sulfurous smelling relaxant is sodium metabisulfite
> which is cheap and L -cysteine an amino acid which is expensive.
> Buit if it's a salt its nothing else but sodium
> metabisulfite(Na2S2O5 or called in the food additives code as E223
> http://www.basf.de/en/produkte/chemi...atriumdi_sorte
> n.htm?id=V00-Ciuup7GP7bsf4Cu


Thank you for your extensive comments.

Are there any sources for limited quantities of these that are food
grade.

I am in a lab environment and have Kg quantity of all these chemicals
because of the nature of work we do and could take them off the shelf
but would not want to. I am aware of Sigma etc. but wanted to be clued
into food industry type suppliers.

Thanks.

Roland

Joe Doe wrote:
> In article . com>,
> wrote:
>
> > Joe Doe wrote:
> > > In article .com>,
> >
> > > If you have a chance Roy could you take a peak - he claims the chef
> > > added a sulfur smelling powder (sea salt? or?)
>
> Ooops I meant "black salt" or "kala namak" - I know it has a strong
> hydrogen sulfide smell but have not been able to find its chemical
> composition. I was wondering if it had naturally a suitable amount of
> relaxant.
>
kala namak is a pinkish grey colored salt that contains traces of
sulfide ores (aside from the NaCl) . Or sulfur bound in different
oxidation state( some with oxygen) to a metal ion. When hydrated even
by atmospheric moisture it tends to release a mixture of hydrogen
sulfide and traces of sulfur dioxide .
These two components have a reducing effect on the protein breaking it
down in the same way that bisulfites and cysteine do.
Hence if its applied to flours it tends to relax the dough making it
extensible, much suited for hand pulled noodle preparation without the
necessity of long rest before the noodle stretching process is done.

>
> Are there any sources for limited quantities of these that are food
> grade.

As far as I know these sodium metabisulfite for insitutional use are
packed in plastc lined drums in 50 lb or bigger quantiies
..
> I am in a lab environment and have Kg quantity of all these chemicals
> because of the nature of work we do and could take them off the shelf
> but would not want to. I am aware of Sigma etc. but wanted to be clued
> into food industry type suppliers.

If you want smaller quantities ( in bottles) better get the reagent
grade as that can be suited to food use also as it has the least
quantities of heavy metal impurities .Chemcially pure C.P. and
United States Pharmaocpeia USP grade may work just as fine like the FCC
( food chemical codex grade).
But Keep away from the technical grades.
If you are looking for cysteine which is an amino acid you had to get
it also from the specialty chemicals suppliers.
Roy

In article . com>,
wrote:

> kala namak is a pinkish grey colored salt that contains traces of
> sulfide ores (aside from the NaCl) . Or sulfur bound in different
> oxidation state( some with oxygen) to a metal ion. When hydrated even
> by atmospheric moisture it tends to release a mixture of hydrogen
> sulfide and traces of sulfur dioxide .
> These two components have a reducing effect on the protein breaking it
> down in the same way that bisulfites and cysteine do.
> Hence if its applied to flours it tends to relax the dough making it
> extensible, much suited for hand pulled noodle preparation without the
> necessity of long rest before the noodle stretching process is done.

In your experience, how long does the effect of chemically relaxed dough
last?

Can you repeatedly re knead and not regain elasticity and maintain
extensibility?


> If you are looking for cysteine which is an amino acid you had to get
> it also from the specialty chemicals suppliers.
> Roy


We have cysteine and cystine as redox pairs for refolding unfolded
proteins.

I will probably try the black salt first.

Thanks again for all the information.

Roland

>In your experience, how long does the effect of chemically relaxed dough
>last?

A bread dough with cysteine can be made to recover its strenght after
fermentation time that takes few hours but I am not sure how it
works in a pasta dough ( like in pulled noodles).. There is not much
oxidation reduction effect in noodles compared to a live bread dough(
with yeast that confers some unique properties to it ).
It will theoritically take more time to recover the gluten
strenght,;
The recovery time also depends on the quantity of cysteine or other
reducing agent you use; thenrefore (mathematically )the gluten strength
recovery will be directly proportional to the concentration of the
reducing agent added.

>Can you repeatedly re knead and not regain elasticity and maintain
>extensibility?

After a long rest it will recover its elasticity as the chemical
reducition is not permanent like the biological reduction by protease
enzymes..You will end up with a play dough like consistency.

>I will probably try the black salt first

If you have the reducing agents in stock like the Lcysteine ,IMO its
temptiing to make a comparative experiments between kala namak and the
cystiene, and try it on hand pulled noodle dough in order to see which
is more effecient .Then cook the noodles and see the difference in
taste and texture.

Roy

Erratum
>; thenrefore (mathematically )the gluten strength
>recovery time will be directly proportional to the concentration of the
>reducing agent added.

Further.... L-cysteine is an amino acid that is present in all protein
molecules and is also used as a fflavoring ingredient in meat
extract. and boullion broth mixes, . therefore its safe to use as a
reducing agent in noodles... as it was in the bread dough.

Roy

I know this is quite an old thread but did the use of L-Cysteine prove to be successful?

I have a detailed recipe for both hand pulled noodles and pizzas in my home.

That's great! I hope you'll be able to share it....:-)