How to make soba noodles from scratch. I looked on YouTube for the buckwheat to flour ratio, and the first recommended video was on Japanese 101 cooking. In the video, the demonstrator cooks up a package of soba noodles and proceeds to plate it with other ingredients. This is not what homemade noodles means! So anyways. This recipe ratio is from Food52, and I must say, if you sub the spelt flour for all purpose flour, the taste is.. hideous. I mean, it doesn't taste like any commercially made soba noodle I ever ate at home or at a restaurant. I don't quite know what spelt flour tastes like; though I've heard it is a healthier alternative to all purpose white flour; even though spelt is just hulled wheat berries. It makes me wonder what the actual difference is between "white" unbromated/unbleached flour and spelt flour since both are using hulled wheat. Maybe it's a marketing thing. It simply boggles the mind how we lie to ourselves about what is and isn't healthy for food ingredients. Though, I've read that while spelt is a wheat, it's a cousin of modern wheat and more nutritious. I digress. This post isn't about the nuances of wheat plants.
For the noodles...
1 c buckwheat flour + more for rolling
1/2 c kamut or white spelt flour (can substitute AP flour)
1/2 c kamut or white spelt flour (can substitute AP flour)
up to 150 ml hot water
For my climate (Pacific Northwest) and season (late summer), there is some humidity in the air and I used 120 ml of water in this batch which made 10.78 oz of fresh noodles.
Directions
In a bowl, mix the two flours together and gradually add hot water until a shaggy/rough dough forms. Sprinkle buckwheat flour onto your work surface and knead the dough until all the flour is combined (no dry spots remain) and the dough ball is smooth.
Once you have rolled the dough out into a big rectangle. Sprinkle the dough with buckwheat flour, then fold the top third down and the bottom third up, like you are folding a 3-page brochure. You can trim the edges if straight edges are important to your noodle making but it is not necessary since they come out terribly shaped no matter how you cut these with a chef knife.
With your hands, shape it into a rectangular blob and start rolling it out until it is 1/4 a centimeter thick. Tessie Woo cuts her noodles thicker for her dish on Food52, but I'm sure you've had noodles that you've either bought at the store or had at a restaurant. Cut the noodles to that imaginary width. For me, I aimed for 1/4 to 1/2 centimeter wide, which is still pretty wide for a soba noodle.
Toss the cut noodles in buckwheat flour to prevent the noodles from sticking to each other.
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add a large handful of noodles to the water. Boil for 1-2 minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water or let drain/cool in an ice water bath.
End notes:
I think I'll stick to making ramen noodles from scratch. While they take longer to prep, they don't have the grainy "I'm eating sand" texture that buckwheat noodles have.
