Homemade Buckwheat Noodles

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)

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.

Hon-kaeshi (soba sauce)

Hon-kaeshi is a dark Japanese noodle sauce often served with chilled soba noodles or other savory dishes. Its ingredients are a ratio of dark soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. I have adapted the ratio for 1 serving, though, it can probably be multiplied for more. And, since I'm using this with a bowl of fresh soba noodles, this preparation is for serving it fresh. A traditional method would be to cook the ingredients together for storage in the refrigerator. You could probably use unbleached granulated sugar instead of brown sugar, but you should use a good quality soy sauce and mirin. I used Takara mirin, a cooking sake.

Ingredients

1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp mirin
1 tsp brown sugar

Directions

Combine ingredients and mix until sugar has dissolved. Serve as is in a separate bowl from soba noodles or mix with soba noodles, then serve.

Can also prepare with rehydrated wakame seaweed and serve over cooked soba noodles. I like wakame since it is cheaper and easier to find in the Pacific NW than bonito, and much easier to prepare than kombu seaweed.

Because this recipe calls for both sugar and soy sauce, it can also be used as a flavoring with grilled chicken (yakitori), thin slices of beef served over vegetables (sukiyaki), etc.

The traditional Kaeshi prep method is as follows:

4 1/4 c. (1 litre) good quality soy sauce
3/4 to 1 c. mirin
3/4 to 1 c. brown sugar

Directions:

1. In a pot, heat mirin until boiling, then simmer until much of the alcohol has evaporated.
2. Turn off heat and add sugar to pot, stirring until sugar is dissolved.
3. Add soy sauce and bring to a boil until liquid temp is 185 degrees F (85 degrees C).
4. Turn off heat and let cool until transferring liquid to a container.