What was my latest sourdough make, you may ask? Noodles.
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This was, quite literally, the easiest recipe I’ve ever followed. Three ingredients: sourdough starter, flour & eggs. I threw them in my stand mixer for about 10 minutes (or however long it took me to do dishes) and just let it go.
One thing I forgot to account for before starting, was rolling them out. I don’t have a pasta roller. All I have is a good ole’ fashioned rolling pin (pretty sure it was my mom’s actually. It’s seen some stuff).
Listen, I’ll be the first to admit that my counters are packed full of stuff. I’m not one to flour my counter directly and knead/roll things out. I do have parchment paper though. I secured the corners of my parchment paper with various things I’ve found on my counters that were within reach (bottle of honey, a salt canister, a bowl, and the bag of flour).
I don’t know why I didn’t think it would be, but this dough was sticky. The first part of rolling it out had me cutting my dough into 8 equal pieces. The outside of the dough had a little bit of an outer crust from resting – the recipe said to rest the dough at least 30 minutes. It ended up resting for a little over an hour – so I think that lulled me into a false sense of security. So anyway…I cut my dough into the 8 pieces and then went to work rolling it out.
That dough stuck to my pin so fast, let me tell ya. It took me at least 5 minutes to get it unstuck.
Once I figured out that I had to add flour to every little thing this dough would touch, it went a lot smoother. I was able to get the dough rolled out to the right thickness and cut almost perfectly evenly (did I mention that I cut it with a pizza crust cutter? lol).
– or so I thought –
Everything looked fabulous and honestly I was pretty hungry, so I decided to make some up. I boiled my water (and added a little bit of salt and butter), then cooked my pasta. What’s nice about fresh noodles is they don’t take nearly as long to cook. The recipe suggested that I let the noodles dry for ~30 minutes or so, or if I were going to store them, have them dry for at least 24 hours. Once that 30 minute timer went off, I threw them into the water and cooked them for about 5-6 minutes.
At minute 2, I knew something was off. Did you know fresh noodles puff up when cooked?
No? Same.
These noodles were so puffy and they looked so wonky. I stared at them while they cooked in disbelief that they would look like that. Honestly, they looked pretty unappealing. I didn’t even take a finished picture of the cooked ones.
I was determined to eat them, though, and truly taste the fruits of my (stand mixer’s) effort. I decided I wanted to dress it up simply. I didn’t put any sauce on the noodles, but I opened a can of roasted red peppers (yum), and my bowl of shaved parmesan cheese as toppings.
It wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever tried, but it was edible, and I’ll count that as a win.
I left the rest of the noodles out on the counter overnight to dry, thinking that Scott & I could eat them the next day for lunch. When I went to start the water and get the noodles ready to cook, I felt that they didn’t dry at all 😦
There were some noodles that were kind of crusty like they had dried, but the majority of them clumped together and made one giant frankennoodle and was still a dough-y, sticky glob. It knocked the motivation right out of me. But I persevered and still cooked the darn noodles.
They. Were. Awful.
Since they were different thicknesses due to clumping together, some noodles didn’t fully cook and they became flaky. But not like…the good flaky. The kind of flaky that makes you think “what is floating in my water, that’s gross.”
To make matters worse, when I was draining them from the water, I accidently poured some of the boiling water on my hand. Luckily, there was no damage.
My sweet husband, he’s truly amazing, ate the entire bowl of crap noodles. I ended up throwing the rest away.
Hot Takes:
If you’re going to make noodles, either be patient if you’re rolling it out by hand. If you think it’s thin enough, make it thinner. Honestly, I’ll probably end up spending the ~$30 on a pasta roller. This is the one I’m looking at.
You’ll also want something to hang the pasta up to dry (this stand looks fairly cost effective and easy to use). Hindsight is 20/20 – I left my noodles out to dry in a clump and a little too close together. I’ve also seen people use the plastic tube hangers too. Anything to keep your noodles separated and from clumping together.
Do not try to break up the noodle clumps in the water if they do stick together. It’s gonna end up like weird looking wonton soup if the wonton you get was at the bottom of the barrel for days and days. You know what I’m talking about.
If you’re going to venture into the sourdough world, flour will be your lifeblood. Find a brand you like and stick with it. I personally have a soft spot for all purpose flour, but I’ve recently made sure to have bread flour in my pantry for the days I am feeling like making fresh bread.
Thanks for enduring this noodle nightmare with me.
The Mediocre Homemaker 