Knowing very little about traditional Asian foods of any sort, it took some doing not to trip over myself when googling "how to make homemade chinese lo mein noodles from scratch" and various iterations thereof. Since the google* only came up with various recipes that don't involve making the actual noodles, I asked the facebook. And the facebook had an answer. A guy that was a friend of a friend in college sent me a link to the video embedded below. It was amazing. The recipe is also listed, but the woman's technique is interesting to watch. Also, the username is "cookingwithdog," which makes more sense when you note the tiny adorable poodle sitting on the counter throughout the whole video. When the recipe was recommended, I was told that Bread Flour for Bread Machines has the same protein content and count be substituted for the udon flour. I ended up using unbleached all-purpose flour because my bread flour is whole wheat.
You can see the original recipe at the link, so here's how I did it. (Yes, I weighed/measured my ingredients and then poured them into measuring things to figure out the U.S. measurements.)
1 1/2 cups flour (preferably flour with 9-9.5% protein content)
1 tbs salt
1/2 cup water
Corn starch to sprinkle liberally
Dissolve salt into water. Measure flour into a separate container. Add the water about 1/3 c or so at a time. It will get flaky, then the last bit of water should get it into a dough. I was afraid that mine was way too watery, but after kneading it for a bit that took care of itself.
Once dough is doughlike (smooth, cohesive, not watery), sprinkle corn starch on it if necessary and put it in a freezer bag or between pieces of cling wrap. Roll it out with a rolling pin as much as you can, then coil the cough up like a jelly roll, turn it, and do it again. This is basically a way of kneading it. Do that several times (I think I did about 5), then shape it into a ball and leave it in the plastic bag. Fold over the end of the bag, but do not seal it. I let it sit for about 20 minutes (but you'll see the recipe suggests much longer). The dough had a different texture than other pasta doughs I've made, but it wasn't too tough to work with.
After it rests, roll it out again (and be generous with the corn starch). I used my hand-crank pasta machine to make it as thin as I could, then sliced it into strips. Watch her method for this -- it involves folding the dough on itself (with help from more corn starch) and slicing off the ends. This worked well, but they came out more like linguine than I was hoping for.
Boil water for the noodles, but reduce the heat to a parboil (about medium) before putting the noodles in. They cook pretty fast, but I was so occupied making constant batches that I don't really know how fast. I had some dough left over, so I'm going to try to freeze it. We'll see how that goes.
Since I was scooping the pasta out instead of straining the whole pot (I wanted to keep it boiling to do more batches), I dried the noodles out by putting them in a cast iron pan on low heat. Since I was ready to cook with them, I added a bit of oil and soy sauce, and they lost the extra water. I cooked some chicken in teriyaki sauce and a spoonful of garlic-ginger paste, then added the noodles back in. Delish.
*Yes I'm aware of what it's called. My partner's gramma often asks him "What's the google" and I think it's funny.
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