Noodles made with high-gluten flour, eggs and alkaline salt (aka lye water) are very common to find in Chinese cuisines in different regions. Hot & Dry Noodles (Re热 Gan干 Mian面), what Wuhan people are proud of, is a typical street food made so. Further to the south, you might still find people who inherited the traditional craftsmanship of Bamboo Noodles. Try to picture a man riding a huge bamboo pole back and forth to roll out a sheet of dough made of flour, alkaline salt and eggs... isn't it fascinating?
So why do we add alkaline salt into noodles? Here are a few answers I can give:
1. It makes our noodles more stretchy and stay in a good shape;
2. Water used for boiling noodles gets less starchy;
3. Noodles can be stored for a longer time without getting sticky;
4. Simply better texture than pure wheat flour noodles;
Although, alkaline salt is often used in western bakeries, it's not a product that you can easily find in shops. We found our bottle in a quite famous Asian grocery shop in Amsterdam. Ever sine we brought it back to Berlin, making noodles has become our weekly cooking entertainment. With many times of trying and failing, we slowly stabilized our own recipe.