shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork 上海肉絲炒粗麵 - part 2

My recent jumped into making a number of Shanghainese delights reignited my desire to make my own Shanghainese thick noodles 上海粗麵. Finding good Asian noodles in the west is most frustrating and I am seldom impressed with the variety with the exception of very few, and this includes edible ramen noodles. My solutions to these frustrations have been taking matter into my own hands. Some noodles are off limit to DIYers and Hong Kong wonton noodles is definitely one. By these I am referring to the raw noodles for making all these dishes where the quality of the noodles are paramount.
What got me thinking this week is how does restaurants like Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐 make their thick noodles? Together with the many Shanghai delights that I made this few days they also have Shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork - 上海肉絲炒粗麵. My insights tell me the main foundation of these restaurants is their expertise in handling wheat flour. When you dissect their many seemingly different dishes you see most share one common theme, that is the dough is freshly made in house.

In preparing dishes with Shanghainese thick noodles 上海粗麵 over the years I, like most home cook, relied on store bought noodles. They are alway dense and heavy unleavened thick noodles. My experience has been the mouth feel of these noodles are always a far cry from what I had in my childhood. The ones in my childhood were always gently al dente, a bit toothsome, and never soggy. Most important, you don't feel like you had swallowed some concrete in the stomach after. What these store bought thick noodles all are too dense and hard, and as a result a tiny portion contains a lot of flour.

My hunch that was reinforced in these past few days is the successful result may be attributable to a few factors:

• a right kind of wheat flour or
• a blend of 2 or more not so ideal flours
• slightly leavening the dough before forming the noodles into shape
• the fact that the noodles were made fresh and properly rested

I rarely get to experience Shanghainese thick noodles 上海粗麵 except making my own with the techniques that I developed from trial and error over the years. In my trips to Toronto over the years I had experience those served in Shanghainese restaurant like Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐. On a good day their noodles do have the attributes that I search for, only if their are not so short on the flavors and the stinginess with the meat.

Shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork - 上海肉絲炒粗麵 at Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐

my Shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork - 上海肉絲炒粗麵 with store bought noodles

Today I got my chance to take this first step tying to make the noodles at home. By making the noodles I mean making the raw noodles from flour instead of using store-bought ones. I have a little bit of leftover dough that I made potstickers 鍋貼 with. I ran out of the filling and have just enough to make 4-6. I rolled out the dough and cut it into strips to form thick noodles. My main objective is to find out the density and mouth feel.

I blanched them in water till they are al dente; they are quite thick as I didn't take into account that they expand

I then served it with some braised pork with its broth

The noodles tasted very similar to typical store bought Shanghai noodles, may be a bit more tender. So next time I will make a batch with a mix of general purpose flour and cake flour in order to achieve the softer noodles that I am aiming for.