Store-bought noodles are nonnegotiable in our pantries, but homemade noodles? They are something else—earthy, chewy, and ridiculously fun. So grab an apron and let us show you how to Make Your Own Noodles. We’ve got glorious recipes, expert tips, handy guides, and so much more.
Noodle ninjas and novices alike can appreciate the joyous simplicity of their favorite carb, a rudimentary mixture of flour and water that can take on many shapes and forms. Today, we’ll investigate a third constituent: salt, the unassuming but essential element that can transform the same dough from stretchy as taffy to chewy and snappy.
But how? Among other things, wheat flour contains proteins. When you mix flour with water, the proteins link up, creating a net of gluten strands that give structure, strength, and shape to the final product, whether it’s noodles, cake, or bread. Salt, added to any dough, strengthens this gluten network by acting like a microscopic magnet, pulling the flour proteins closer to each other. Think of the gluten network in unsalted dough as a crochet throw blanket with lots of space between the proteins, and the gluten network in a salted dough as a high-thread-count bed linen with the proteins knit tightly together.
Cooks take advantage of salt’s tightening effect to create dramatically different textures in noodles, by simply switching up the amount in the dough. Take this biang biang dough: With ½ tsp. salt (less than 1% of the flour weight), the dough is elastic, stretching easily like your favorite pair of worn-out underwear. This udon dough, on the other hand, has a full 2 Tbsp. salt for the same amount of flour (almost 5%). The resulting noodles are so bouncy and springy, they practically bite back when you chew down.
Curious still? Of course you are.
I’ve made fresh pasta before and never added salt to the dough. How is it still firm and chewy?
If “use your noodle” were a question, this would be it. Fresh pasta is made one of two ways: with finely ground flour and egg yolks (or whole eggs), or with semolina flour and water. In both cases, there’s more than enough structure from the high-protein eggs or semolina flour that the resulting pasta is strong and resistant. Adding salt to pasta dough is unnecessary at best, and detrimental to the rolling and shaping at worst.
What about salt in the cooking water? Does that also affect the texture of pastas and noodles?
Nope. Salt in the cooking water is purely for seasoning and doesn’t have any significant effect on the final texture of cooked pasta or noodles. As for why cooking water is salted for all pastas but not all noodles, the answer comes down to how they’re finished. Noodles served in briny broths (like this fiery kimchi sujebi and dashi-rich udon) or sauces full of salty ingredients (like soy and fish sauce) don’t need that extra salt in the water. And unlike European pasta and noodle dishes, which often rely on the salted cooking water as part of the seasoning for the final sauce, Asian noodle recipes rarely, if ever, reuse it, negating the need to salt.
Does the type of salt matter?
Not really. All common salts are chemically the same composite of sodium chloride. What will vary is the size of the crystals from large, flaky Maldon to finely ground pink Himalayan salt. At BA, our preference is for coarse grains of Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, a favorite among chefs across America. If you’re measuring your salt by volume, know that you will have to adjust the amount depending on the size of the salt crystals. Just another reason to use a scale—no matter what salt you use, the weight will always remain the same.
