How to make noodles: the art and science of manipulating gluten

Humans

It's easy and fun to make hand-pulled noodles, especially if you understand how gluten is acting inside the dough to make it stretch y and elastic, says Sam Wong

By Sam Wong

18 March 2020

What you need

Flour
Salt
Vegetable oil
Garlic
Spring onions
Sichuan pepper
Chilli flakes
Soy sauce
Chinese black vinegar

MAKING noodles by hand is an art, practised most spectacularly by chefs in China who pull, twist and stretch a single piece of dough into hundreds of strands as diners watch. It takes years to master this, but some types of noodle are pretty easy and fun to make at home. One is biang biang noodles, which originated in Shaanxi province in central China.

Hand-pulled noodles are testament to the stretchy and springy properties of gluten, a mix of two groups of wheat proteins: glutenins and gliadins. When flour and water combine, glutenins link into a large network, while tightly folded gliadins bond weakly to glutenins and to each other.

Dough is stretchy because the gliadins act like ball bearings, allowing glutenins to slide past each other. It is elastic because coiled stretches of protein resist deformation and pull back to their original shape. To make noodles, you need the gluten to be strong enough that you can pull the dough without it breaking, but not so strong that it won鈥檛 stretch.

One consideration is the protein content of the flour. Plain flour has around 10 per cent protein and strong bread flour has up to 15 per cent. I have made noodles with both, but the plain flour dough was slightly easier to work with.

To make noodles for two, take 300 grams of flour and mix in half a teaspoon of salt. Salt strengthens the gluten network because it interacts with charged portions of the proteins, helping them bond.

Mix in 150 millilitres of water with your hands to make a fairly stiff dough. Cover and leave for half an hour for the flour to hydrate and start forming gluten. After this, knead the dough for 2 minutes, then divide it into six pieces and roll each into a log shape. Coat them with oil, then cover and leave for 2 hours. In this time, protease enzymes will break down the gluten a bit, making the dough softer and more stretchy.

Meanwhile, prepare the toppings: minced garlic and spring onions, ground Sichuan pepper and chilli flakes.

After 2 hours, get a large pot of water on the boil and flatten a log of dough into a rectangle with a rolling pin. Take a chopstick and press it lengthways down the middle of the rectangle to create two strips that are still joined together. Pick them up and, holding each end throughout, stretch them horizontally, moving your hands up and down as you pull to make the noodles slap on the work surface. Aim for metre-long noodles. Then pull the two strips apart.

When you have prepared half the noodles, cook them for a minute and then remove from the water. Prepare and cook the rest. Now heat 5 tablespoons of oil until almost smoking. In a bowl, pile the toppings on the noodles, then pour over the hot oil. Add 2 tbsp soy sauce and 2 tbsp , then mix until all the noodles are coated.

For next week

Plain flour

Salt

Vegetable oil

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