Culinary Experiment…
“So Tuesday night I decided to experiment with making my own noodles. (Earlier in the day I had made bread, which I do semi-regularly. I say this to explain that I am a modestly experienced baker.) I have fond memories of my Mom’s homemade noodles in her homemade chicken noodle soup, yummy!
So I mixed up the dough. I started in my Kitchen-Aide, but quickly realized this was a task better suited for hand kneading. (Oh, and I was using the recipe from my handy-dandy Betty Crocker cookbook.)
Once mixed the dough was supposed to sit covered for 15 minutes.
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Why I don’t know, it’s not like it has an yeast it or that it rises at all, but whatever, it sat. (Oh, off to the side you can see my cup of water and my measuring cup of flour. I started out too dry, added water, still too dry, added too much water, oops, added flour, just right!)
Then the dough is cut into 4 equal pieces and rolled out. I was experimenting with my two rolling pins and couldn’t decide which one I liked better. This is more than halfway done with the third piece rolled out and the last piece above it for comparison. Yes I was cutting the noodles with a chef’s knife.
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The recipe said to fold in thirds, loosely, and cut. I could see why; if you are cutting a shorter distance your noodles are bound to be more even. However, I was having a really hard time unfolding the cut noodles, so I abandoned that step and simply had uneven noodles! And, I found it was easier, once I had them rolled out, to pull the dough off the counter first and then lay it back down, before cutting. It was then much easier to pull the cut noodles off the counter.
I forgot to take a picture of my cut noodles drying on the counter, but if you had seen them you would have seen how wildly uneven they were!
However, I do have the finished product:
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Very Yummy, just like I remember my moms, thicker and more substantial than store bought noodles. We had ours with the spaghetti sauce that simmering in the crock-pot in the picture. If I do this more often I may look to invest in a pasta machine.
‘Cause you know that something like this is super affordable. It’ll pay for itself in no time, right? Though, realistically Amazon has lots of options. That’s in the future. For now, though, let’s eat!!
P.S. for those that follow my other blog, I’m about to update it for the first time in over 6 months. Craziness. Check it out.
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