Homemade Ramen Noodles, The Series. Episode 2: Longing for Eggcellence

    Today I made another failed attempt at ramen noodles. I managed a better flavor in these ones (by a very small degree) but fared far worse in the texture department somehow. So depressing...

    I used only a quarter of the original recipe from Tess to save on flour. This is apparently going to become an expensive venture.

3/4 c flour
    1/4 c sorghum
    1/4 c millet
    1/4 c tapioca
    1/2 tsp xantham gum
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp kansui diluted in 1/4 c water
2 tbsp approx. oil

    Since my last post I've done a little bit of research on ramen noodles. "Normal" noodles tend to have a nice yellow color which I had assumed came from the use of egg, but apparently it doesn't! By all accounts (those being the ingredients list on Nissin Chicken Top Ramen and various nameless individuals on message boards) egg isn't even supposed to be in the classic ramen noodle. The yellow color actually comes from some class of chemical reaction between kansui and flour (I'm assuming that that, too, only works for wheat flour. Gluten: 10001 and counting, Gluten free: 2).



    So, I tried it without the egg. There's a little text smiley that I really think sums up the results perfectly... D:! This stuff was impossible. Even with added moisture the dough was crumbling in my hands. I'm optimistic sometimes when I shouldn't be and thus also tried running it through the pasta machine. The resulting flattened crumbs were what I ended up boiling to just see how they tasted. At least that made a slight improvement!

    I threw the dough away (a sinful thing to do but whatever) and will hope for a brighter tomorrow!