First Noodles

12-27-2024

Intro

Welcome to the hunt! Our mission was simple: find the perfect gluten-free noodle. Little did we know, we were about to embark on a culinary adventure full of trial and error, flour experiments, and a lot of noodle-related frustrations. But in the end, we learned a ton and had some tasty moments along the way. So let’s dive in!

Equipment

Pasta maker (with linguini and spaghetti settings), Rolling pin, Large stainless steel bowl

Ingredients

Brown rice flour, White rice flour, Sweet rice flour, Tapioca starch, Potato starch, Cassava flour, Oat flour, Sorghum flour, Buckwheat flour, Xantham gum, Whole eggs, Olive Oil

Ingredients and equipment used in these noodle experiments

Our Noodle Journey: The First Attempts

Here’s a breakdown of how our noodle-making attempts went, along with our notes on the dough, texture, taste, and overall results. We gave each noodle a semi-quantitative rating based on different categories: workability, initial taste, aftertaste, look, and texture.

Noodle 1 (cooked)

Noodle 2 (cooked)

Noodle 3 (uncooked)

Noodle 6 (cooked)

Noodle #1

Dough: This dough was difficult to work with—too sticky and crumbly. We couldn’t get the small noodles to hold together without breaking apart. We also forgot to add salt, which ended up being a big mistake.

Pasta: After boiling for about 3.5 minutes, the noodles fell apart a little in the water, but the flavor was surprisingly good. They were sticky, with a slight beefy taste, though they needed salt. The small noodles looked almost like ramen, but they were tough to handle and incredibly brittle.

First Noodle [Uncooked]

Noodle #2

Dough: This dough was more workable than the first, but still a bit on the sticky side. We rolled them in potato starch, which helped prevent them from breaking apart and added significantly more salt to the dough this time.

Pasta: After boiling for about 4 minutes, these noodles were quite slimy. They still lacked salt and broke apart a little too easily when chewed, but the flavor was decent once you got past the slippery texture.

Noodle #3

Dough: Finally, a dough that worked more easily than the previous two! This batch was extremely workable and didn’t break when we rolled it. We could even make the small noodles without issue.

Pasta: After 4 minutes in the boiling water, the noodles were slightly slippery but had a grainy texture. The color was quite dark, and it gave off a healthy vibe. The flavor was nice, though it felt a bit more earthy than the first batch. Overall, I like the workability of the dough, but did not like the texture or taste as much as the first noodle.

Noodle #4

Dough: The dough was slightly less workable than #3, but we were still able to roll it out and create both small and large noodles.

Pasta: This batch had an interesting aftertaste that wasn’t my favorite, and the texture was slimy and chewy. The buckwheat flavor was still present, but it didn’t have quite the same depth as the previous batch.

Noodle #5

Dough: This dough was just as workable as the previous batch, allowing us to form both small and large noodles easily.

Pasta: The noodles had a nice, deep color, similar to #4. The taste and texture were also very similar to #4, which meant we still had that slightly slimy chewiness, but it was overall a satisfying noodle.

Recipes Tried!

Noodle Scoring Matrix

My favorite noodle was #5 or #6.

Final Thoughts

After all of our experiments, it was clear that we were learning something new with every batch of noodles. While the flavor of the first noodle was definitely the best overall, it was incredibly brittle and hard to work with. Adding buckwheat to the flour helped to give it ductility, but overwhelmed the taste. If you're experimenting with buckwheat, it’s best to use it sparingly unless you're okay with it being the star of the show.

We have a lot to learn and we certainly did not find the perfect noodle in these initial experiments, but we now have a good idea of the properties of gluten free dough.

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