Oodles of Noodles

    One of the interesting things I've learned to make while working in the bakery is noodles. I love making them for lots of reasons. First just because it's neat to think I'm making noodles from scratch and second because it's super fun ... especially with the Amish girlfriend I have in the bakery.

   

    The BEST part is cracking the eggs and fishing out the yolks ... my friend knows that I love this part and lets me do it every time. I crack the eggs together (my friend showed me this trick :) and fill a whole bowl with them. When it gets to full I fish the yolks out with my hands. I love feeling the slimy whites drip through my fingers. It's important that the yolks don't break and mix with the whites because then the whites can't be saved.

    

    Noodles take a lot of eggs yolks (I've used 19 dozen in a batch before). We like to use brown farm fresh eggs because the yolks are brighter and the noodles become more yellow. Nothing is wasted in this bakery though. The whites are kept in half gallon jars for angel food cakes and the shells are slightly baked, then crushed, and come spring they're sprinkled around the lettuce and cabbage plants to ward off slugs and snails.   

Yolks, Salt, & Pasty Flour

Golden Dough

Use Those Arms!

       The large jars to the right are full of eggs whites and small one is yolks for tomorrow's rolls.

Cheese?

    Then they're cut into squares flattened with the noodle noodle flattener/cutter, and dried. You have to flatten them quickly because of you let them get to dry they flatten with a jagged edge rather than a smooth one and that's not good for the cutting process. 

Hanging out to Dry ... Can you see some dry jagged ones on the back?

Then They're Cut

    This is the same device that we used to flatten them, but i just didn't have any good pictures of the flattening process ... oh well.

     You can't let the noodle dry for too long on the rack either because then they'll snap and crack as you're trying to cut them. About the time you hang your last strip to dry the strip you flattened is ready to be cut. 

Dried AGAIN!

     And then they're dried a third time. After that they're bagged, weighed, and shelved ...   

Be Careful Not To Crack Them!

     

    Wasn't that fun? I feel like an all-out Scratch Baker!