a while back I promised Johan I would be doing some ramen testing with the kansui liquid to see what produced the best results. Here's what I found today.
I tested two recipes with a base of 200g gold medal bread flour and 40% hydration of hot water (40C). The dough on the left was made with 2.5% kansui while the other was made with 1.5%. Both doughs were made with a food processor and then rested for 2 hours before rolling in the pasta roller.
Each dough was rolled to setting 3 & 4 on the machine and cooked until they just lost the raw bite (approximately 2 minutes).
Notes:
Dough #1 was had more chew than dough #2 at both sizes. Dough #2 was described as being more snappy than chewy but still had nice texture. I felt that dough #2 was best at size 3 and would be perfect for non-soup noodle applications. Dough #1 was also best at setting 3 and would be great in a bowl of ramen or served cold as a noodle salad due to its nice chew. On setting 4 it was slightly softer and may be better in a more rich ramen broth. I would consider taking it to size 5 if I wanted to use it in Hong Kong style wonton noodle soup.
Overall the doughs are very dry and stiff so it does take some work to get them rolled out to fit the machine initially. I opted to use the food processor so that I could work the dough hard initially with less physical effort and then let it rest for a longer period before rolling. I think it would be very difficult to do this by hand. It would likely take several resting periods between kneading to get the proper gluten formation.
I used no excess flour when rolling the pasta or shaping the ball from the processor. The only excess flour used was to keep the noodles from sticking before the boiling step.
Overall, I am pleased with the results and want to look into some of the flour blends that Ivan orkin has in his book
