Introduction Do you need warm or cold water to make handmade noodles?
There are many ways to make handmade noodles, and everyone has their own understanding of how to make them. The quality of the noodles varies, and the handmade noodles can be steamed, stir-fried, or mixed with vegetables and meats, and can also be made into soup noodles. When it comes to noodles, what we are most proud of is our mother's handmade noodles, which are soft, smooth, delicate, strong, and have the taste of home across thousands of miles, as if they could make people return to their homeland for a brief moment.
So do you need warm or cold water to make handmade noodles? My answer is cool water. Let's analyze why next.
I. What is handmade noodles and what are its characteristics!
Handmade noodles it is made by hand, by and noodles, playing noodles, pulling noodles or rolled or pressed into thin slices cut into noodles all made by hand. When it comes to its characteristics, the south and the north make noodles differently, each with its own distinctive features. Northern people make handmade noodles, the most famous is pulled noodles, as the name suggests is to pull the noodles made by hand, pulling the noodles to do a soft and smooth toughness, is not easy, the need for brawn over the people, the strength of the control to be appropriate, just with a soft, in order to make a good product of the noodles. And the southern noodles, but heavy soft with just, cool and not crisp, the key is to do when the noodles, with the strength of the dough and good, it uses the body's bouncing force to the big bamboo or wooden stick pressure, the dough pressure book, and finally cut into thick and thin noodles to. South and north of the noodles have a **** the same characteristics, that is, good noodles into the pot does not stick to the pot, not muddy soup, not broken, cooked noodles not paste, taste is not sticky, not toothless, soft, strong, crisp.
Second, warm water and noodles and cold water and noodles and their respective characteristics!
1, warm water and the characteristics of the noodles: because the temperature of warm water is higher than cold water, the water temperature is not easy to control, the water molecules diffusion accelerated, causing starch pasteurization or protein denaturation, so that the formation of gluten texture is subject to certain limitations, gluten is destroyed, the starch absorbs a lot of water and expansion, become pasteurized, the decomposition of mono-sugar and bisaccharides, so that the warm-water dough becomes glutinous, strong, small, whiter color. The gluten, toughness and elasticity of the noodles made from this kind of dough will be lower than that of the cold water noodles, and the color of the noodles will be inferior to that of the cold water noodles, which is moderate in taste, rich in sweetness, and easy to be matured, which is the characteristic of the warm water and the noodles, so it is not suitable for making handmade noodles.
2, cold water and the characteristics of the noodles: cold water dough is the use of 30 degrees below the water and flour mixing, and into the water-tempered dough, also commonly known as cold water dough. Due to the use of cold water and noodles, the protein in the flour can not occur thermal denaturation, so it will form more and stronger gluten. The starch does not swell and paste at low temperatures, so the resulting dough is strong, tough, particularly strong and dull, so it is also known as "dead noodles". Cool water dough made of noodles characteristics, the finished product is whiter in color, eat the taste of soft and smooth, strong, not easy to break after cooking, so the production of handmade noodles we have to use cool water to and noodles.
Summary: warm water and noodles will reduce the gluten of the flour, resulting in dough will be particularly soft, the production of noodles into the pot is easy to muddy soup and easy to break, eat the texture is not strong and smooth, so you should use cool water and noodles, so that you can eat the noodles of the sense of strength.
Three ways to make handmade noodles with cool water and noodles!
The method of making handmade noodles with cool water and noodles is to put the flour into a container or on a board, pour in the right amount of cool water and stir it into a flocculent shape, and then get down to kneading it into a hard dough, and then after waking up to make the noodles by artificial means. As the saying goes, "alkali is the bone and salt is the tendon", in order to increase the strength and smoothness of the noodles, we usually add an appropriate amount of salt and edible alkali when making noodles to improve the toughness of the dough. In order to make strong and smooth noodles, the ratio of flour and water is also very critical. In our family, according to the different seasons of winter and summer, we usually add 200-225 grams of cool water to 500 grams of flour to make a hard dough, and then wake up the dough, and the waking time will depend on the kind of handmade noodles that we want to make, which is usually half an hour to four hours or so. When shaping the dough, use both hands to "knead" it vigorously to ensure the quality of the finished product. (You can also add eggs to the flour to increase the nutritional content of the noodles and the toughness of the dough)
The above is a specific analysis of whether to use warm or cool water to make handmade noodles, and the operation. And the conclusion is that you should use cool water and noodles is better, cool water and noodles made out of handmade noodles taste softer, stronger, smoother. Here we go through the specific operation to make a handmade sour soup noodles.
Four, practical operation
1, prepare ingredients
1) main ingredients: 300 grams of high-gluten flour, 120 grams of water, 2 grams of salt, 1 gram of edible alkali;
2) ingredients: cilantro, scallions;
3) seasoning: salt, soy sauce, pepper, chicken powder, oyster sauce, balsamic vinegar, sesame oil, sesame red oil.
2, handle the ingredients
1) put the high gluten flour into a container, add salt and edible alkali and mix well, then slowly pour cool water with chopsticks and stir into flocculent, underhand knead into a hard dough, cover with plastic wrap and wake up for 10 minutes, and then knead it with force to make a smooth and delicate dough, and then again seal the plastic wrap and wake up for 30 minutes.
2) Clean the cilantro and scallions, chop them into a large bowl, season with salt, pepper, chicken powder, soy sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce, balsamic vinegar, and sesame oil and set aside.
3, start making
1) After the dough is woken up, sprinkle dry flour on the board, put the dough on the surface, sprinkle some dry flour on the surface of the dough, and use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a pancake of even thickness, the thickness of about 1mm can be.
2) After the dough is rolled out, sprinkle some dry flour on the pastry to prevent it from sticking, and then fold it several times to fold it into a rectangle. Use a knife to cut the noodles into even thickness, the width of the noodles can be according to personal preference.
3) After the noodles are cut, gently shake off the dry flour on the noodles and set aside.
4) Add water to the pot, bring to a boil over high heat, add a pinch of salt and cooking oil, add the noodles, and add cool water to the pot three times each when you see the water boiling, so that the noodles will be stronger due to the principle of heat expansion and cold contraction. (The addition of salt and cooking oil to the cooking water will make the noodles more robust, non-sticky and non-overflowing)
5) When the noodles are ripe, they will be shiny, and then immediately pulled out and put them into the bowl of the sauce, then add an appropriate amount of noodle soup to the bowl and stir well to serve.
V. Handmade Noodles
1. What kind of flour is used to make handmade noodles?
A: When making handmade noodles, it is best to use high-gluten flour, followed by medium-gluten flour, low-gluten flour is too weak to make noodles.
The elasticity of noodles is closely related to the protein in the flour, and the protein content of the flour, as well as the quality of gluten, is related to the gluten of wheat flour. High-gluten flour has the highest protein content and stronger gluten, making the noodles taste more robust and delicious. Medium gluten flour has moderate gluten and is easy to work with, so high gluten flour is preferred for making handmade noodles, followed by medium gluten flour.
2, when making handmade noodles, why is it especially important to wake up and knead the noodles?
Answer: When making noodles, adding less water to the dough makes it harder and more difficult to roll out, so it is necessary to go through repeated kneading and waking up to loosen the dough so that it can be easily handled.
The production of noodles in general dough to three kneading three wake up, so that the rich protein is conducive to the stabilization of the protein network, can make the dough with a fine and uniform pores, so that the noodles strong and smooth, easy to rehydrate and cook. As the saying goes, "a beaten wife, kneading down the noodle", only when the water in the dough is fully mixed with the noodle, and there are no air bubbles in the dough, the handmade noodles will be resistant to cooking and will not be mushy, and the texture will be more sinewy. After the dough is ready, take it out and put it on the board and knead it vigorously, which is a laborious job and you should never be lazy. You can knead the dough a few more times during the period, so that the dough can be woken up better and faster and kneaded smoothly, so that the kneaded dough is the best state of handmade noodles.
Six final summary
In fact, the production of handmade noodles is relatively simple, the main selection of flour, cold water and noodles, after waking up and kneading, will produce a good noodles, into the pot is not muddy soup, not easy to crumble, and cooking out of the noodles taste soft, smooth, strong, especially delicious.