Daring Cooks' Challenge: Noodles!

Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess.  Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine.  She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Wow. i haven't updated this blog in so long...i've been sick for quite a while and my summer class goes by so fast..a midterm every other week. so the only time i have for baking/cooking is when i'm baking/cooking for the daring kitchen..but it's better than nothing! 

anyway, making noodles is so easy and very rewarding! and you don't need a pasta machine!! i used giver's log's blog for the recipe since the recipe that she used came up in many other websites so it seemed reliable. plus, this blog had some pretty good tips and pretty pictures(and she used heart cutters! :)) 

it was great knowing that just a couple eggs, flour, salt, and water can produce fascinating and yummy results. and the cool thing about noodles is you can make so many things with it: chow mein, noodle salad, spaghetti, fettuccine alfredo perhaps...

so here's what you need!!

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup to 1/2 cup water

sift the flour and salt together. then make a well in the center.

pour the egg yolks and egg inside the well and start mixing it from the middle, incorporating the flour towards the center a little at at time.

it should look something like this!

add the water a tablespoon at a time, just until all the egg/flour pieces stick together to form the dough.

almost there! i think i added about a 1/4 cup plus 1 or 2 tablespoons of water.

place the dough on a floured surface and knead for about ten minutes until it's smooth. it is a pretty tough dough to work with so don't worry. it's completely normal. ( i was totally worrying..and was tempted to add more water..but i pulled through!) 

beautiful dough! 

now that's done kneading, wrap in saran wrap and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. this will help the dough be more pliable when rolling out!

once it is done resting, cut into 4 equal parts! i used my new kitchen scale! 

flour your surface well; a sticking dough is a sad, sad ripped dough =/

roll out the dough as thin as possible...remember some people roll their dough out with fancy pants-y pasta machines and those things spit out dough crazy thin. 

once each ball is rolled out thin, wrap in saran wrap (don't want the dough to dry out) and leave it in the fridge for two hours...trust me it will be awesome. letting it rest in the fridge for two hours enables the dough to stretch out more, making it possible to roll it out really, really thin!! 

once taken out of the fridge, roll the dough out thinner (don't forget to flour, flour your surface!!) 

then cut into equal-sized strips with your trusty knife!

then add half a handful of flour and mix into the pasta strands so they will not stick to each other.

so fun!!

then place them on a plate and leave them out to dry! some people hang them to dry but i didn't have much space...and i was kind of lazy so i just plopped them onto a plate. straight strands are overrated anyways! 

and you're pretty much done! if you want to cook them right after you cut them into strands, they take about five minutes to cook. dry noodles take about 8 minutes to cook!