r/AskCulinary

Hi all!

I’m trying to make Lanzhou lamian noodles from scratch, but my dough has very little strength or elasticity. It stretches poorly and doesn’t seem to develop the extensibility needed for hand-pulled noodles.

I refrigerated the dough overnight hoping the elasticity would improve, but it still isn’t great.

I’ve uploaded a YouTube video showing my kneading process and the current condition of the dough. I’d appreciate any feedback on what might be going wrong and how I can improve the dough’s strength and elasticity.

Link to video is here:

Recipe:

-500g of blue twin spoons special dumpling wheat flour

-300ml water (60% hydration)

-5g sodium carbonate diluted in 12ml warm water (I baked bicarbonate of soda at 130 degrees celsius for 1 hour)

-4 g salt

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I started preheating my oven to 400 degrees 40 minutes ago and it’s still at 330. Is this normal? The rest of my meal is already done and has been for a while, I expected it to take only a few minutes

So I followed this recipe on Gravlax from the NYT:

It called for 1 cup of salt and 2 cups of sugar. I don't have those measuring cups(I will buy it in the future) so I just weighed them out. Maldon salt 1 cup = 115 grams(according to google), 220 grams of cane sugar; 440 in total for 2 cups. And finally a "bunch" dill. I have no idea what "bunch" means so I just used all the dill I got that was bundled together at the supermarket. It looked like A LOT when I chopped it up and mixed it with my salt/sugar, but it's what the recipe called for... I'm not really sure, should I have used less dill?

Anyways, I let it cure for a bit over 36 hours, maybe into the 40s. I think I let it sat for too long because when I pulled it, it tasted way too sweet and the outer texture was rubbery(kind of like chewy candy if I'm being honest). I think this is a) let it sit for too long, 24 hours probably better?? and b) too much sugar, I think I should've gone with way more salt than the recipe called for and less sugar. It looked amazing though, nice dark pink color.

During the cure, it also leaked a lot of fish oils, though not really any water. Could this be because I didn't wrap it tight enough with plastic wrap? Or should I have put the cure on both sides like some other recipe? I also forgot to press it and only did so in the middle of the cure at around the 18ish hour mark.

I used a wild sockeye previously frozen salmon, apparently it is better if it's previously frozen to kill the parasites and I haven't gotten sick yet... but we'll see... In the future, I'm going to be using farm raised, I think that might be better? My palette isn't refined enough tell the difference anyways :p

Things to perhaps fix for the future:

Get measuring cups for precise measurements.

Way less sugar and more salt. Maybe use kosher salt instead of Maldon salt for smaller grains.

Pull it out at around 24 hours instead of waiting the full 36.

And ofc any tips from culinary professional :)

I ended up tossing most of it, ate a few pieces myself. I just couldn't get over the chewy candy texture it had, though the inner part where not much of the cure touched had the great soft salmon texture.