Traditional Japanese soba noodles are made with a combination of buckwheat flour and wheat flour. Because of the gluten and protein content from the wheat flour, the dough is more elastic and it gives a little chew to the texture. Unlike ramen noodles, these are less chewy as there are no baking soda or kansui (food grade lye water) added into the dough. There are many ways to consume soba, they can be served in hot or cold dashi or sometimes, you can also find yakisoba (stir-fry soba noodles in soy based sauce) in restaurants. I love serving them cold, dip in mentsuyu and topped with freshly sliced scallion and finely grated daikon. In this recipe, I have added an extra touch of umami into my homemade soba with some local (Swedish) sugar kelp into the dough. 100% UMAMI, 100% VEGAN. I hope you’ll like it!
Makes 10 portions
Ingredients
- 400 g buckwheat flour from Risenta
- 590 g all-purpose flour
- 1.5 tbsp sea salt 2 tbsp dried powdered sugar kelp/seaweed from Nordic Seafarm
- 410 ml ice water (+/- 10-20 ml depending on the flours hydration)
- Corn flour for dusting during rolling and after cut
Recipe Preparation
Preheat oven to 170℃. Spread out buckwheat flour on a clean, dry baking sheet evenly. Bake in the middle of the oven. Undisturbed, for 15-20 minutes. Flour should smell nutty but not burnt. Once it’s done, set aside to cool completely. In a medium bowl, combine salt, and water, stirring until salt is dissolved.
Using a standing mixer with dough hook attachment, put flour in mixer bowl and gradually add salted water while mixing at medium speed and scraping flour from sides of bowl until a rough, flaky dough is formed. Add powdered seaweed. You might need to stop the mixer once or twice during mixing and use your hands to bring the dough together.
Note: the mixture will look dry, but that’s normal, so don’t be tempted to add more water.
After about 10 minutes, a crumbly dough should have formed. Weight the whole amount of dough and divide into 10 portions. Use your hands to form a rough ball and place them in large baking sheet. Cover it with plastic wrap and let the dough rest for 20 minutes to allow the gluten to relax.
Work with one piece of dough at a time, keeping remaining dough covered. Knead the dough with your hands until it’s a bit more pliable to handle and use a rolling pin to flatten into a 1 cm thick piece so it will be easier to fit into the pasta roller.
Get your standing mixer with pasta roller attachment ready at setting one at low speed. Slide the dough into the roller, using your fingers to press gently on the dough as it slides through. Fold the resulting rough sheet into thirds, like a business letter, and use a rolling pin to form it into another rectangular shape. Repeat the folding and putting it through the roller until it’s elastic and smooth, roughly another 7-8 times, end with thickness setting 3. Cover the flatten dough, dust with corn starch, repeat for the remaining 9 pieces.
Once you have all pieces flattened out, change the attachment to the spaghetti cutter and slice the rectangles into noodles. After each batch, toss the noodles in corn flour and form them into a loose, round batch. Repeat for the rest of the sheets. Noodles are ready.
It is important to rinse the cooked noodles in cold water prior serving as the corn starch that remains on the noodles can cause the noodles become gluey.
Storage instruction:
I highly recommend to freeze unused noodles individually for best results. Storing them in the fridge for longer period of time could cause noodles to stick together.
Place divided ramen on a clean baking sheet, wrap portioned noodles individually with plastic wrap and freeze.
It is unnecessary to defrost noodles prior to cooking, simple boil water and cook noodles, stir frequently to avoid noodles sticking to the bottom of the pot, for 3 minutes. Rinse with cold water for 30 seconds prior serving.
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