Handmade Buckwheat noodle ー Teuchi Soba 手打ちそば

New Year is coming!! Happy new year!　良いお年お！

In Japan, traditionally, the last thing eaten on New Year's Eve is soba, and it's called toshi-koshi soba 年越しそば。It represent letting go of hardship of the year.

Soba is made of buckwheat flour or a mix of buckwheat and wheat flour. Buckwheat is richer in minerals compared to many common cereals. Despite the misleading name, buckwheat is not wheat. Like quinoa, buckwheat is a pseudo-cereals, that they are consumed as cereal grains but don’t grow on grasses. Buckwheat is rich in minerals and scores low to medium on glycemic index.

Making handmade soba noodle( Teuchi Soba 手打ちそば) is not difficult, but to makes a good one takes some craftsmanships. In Japan, takes 10 years studies and practices to become a soba master.

Two type of handmade soba are usually seen:十割そば（towari soba) and 二八そば（ni-hachi soba). 十割そば（towari soba) uses 100% buckwheat flour. 二八そば（ni-hachi soba) use 20% wheat flour and 80% buckwheat flour. The soba making processes are similar. But 十割そば（towari soba) uses 100% buckwheat flour is usually much more difficult to make because buckwheat doesn't have any gluten, so the dough is very easy to break.

Keeping the room in a cold temperature can help to prevent dough from breaking apart.

Handmade Soba 手打ちそば（Teuchi Soba)

Ingredients:

40 g buckwheat flour

10 g whole wheat flour

About 1/8 cup water

Instructions:

1. Sieve buckwheat flour and whole wheat flour into a cold container with smooth surface .

Traditionally, a konebachi（捏鉢）- a lacquer coated kneading bowl is used as the container.

2. Add the water little by little and kneed the dough.

Don't kneed the dough too long, otherwise the noodle will be come too soft.

When the dough form a relatively smooth texture, it's about done. Make the dough into a round ball.

3. Quickly roll the dough evenly into a thin sheet.

Buckwheat is easy to break, make sure don't only focus on one direction.

4. Fold the sheet and cut into noodles.

Dust some buckwheat flour or tapioca flour on the cutting board, and some on top of the sheet.

Fold the sheet, so the sheet is about half of the width of your cutting knife.

Dust some flour on the cutting board helps to provide a cushion for soba cutting.

Use something like a ruler to guid your cutting. Traditionally, komaita(駒板) is used as the soba cutting guiding tool. Ideally, the edo/tokyo style sobo is about 1mm.

5. Boil the buckwheat noodle in boiling water for 1 minute. Cover the pot while boiling the soba.

After one minute's boiling, immediately put the noodle into ice water. This process helps the noodle to taste more "al dente"

Traditionally, soba is enjoyed with bonito stock, onion and wasabi. The soba is put on a bamboo sheet on top of a wooden box to keep the noodle becomes too soft too easily.