Making soba noodles the easy way














He produces a thin, wide sheet of dough, nearly the size of a bath towel and no thicker than a quarter, folds it into eight layers and starts cutting with a tall, thin-bladed steel cleaver called soba-kiri. Keeping the cleaver as upright as possible, he cuts quickly, guided by a board. After each cut, he angles the soba-kiri almost imperceptibly to move the guide across the dough. The knife hits his cutting mat rhythmically; "it should be the sound of horses trotting," he says. And what he ends up with is more than 2,000 identical, perfectly julienned strands of delicate soba -- the final product of a technique that has been honed over decades.

Now, soba the easy way: During a recent visit to L.A., Inouye also demonstrated his method for those who want to try their hand at soba. The key is to make a small quantity so that no special equipment (or years of refined technique) is needed.

Inouye mixes all-purpose and buckwheat flour -- still using the 2-to-8 ratio -- along with some water in a plastic bag. He likes using a plastic bag because it's convenient and helps keep in moisture (you could instead use a bowl). Twisting the bag closed, he starts squeezing it to combine the flour and water thoroughly. He removes it from the bag and begins kneading.

The type of buckwheat flour you use is paramount to the success of your soba (which in Japanese means both "buckwheat" and "buckwheat noodles"). The way the buckwheat is harvested, threshed, dried and milled all play a part in determining whether the flour can be used for soba. You can't use Bob's Red Mill buckwheat flour, for example (we tried and ended up with a wet, sandy mixture instead of smooth dough). But stone-milled buckwheat flour from Cold Mountain worked well and is available at select Japanese markets.

He continues to knead, using the heel of his hand and his palm to fold the dough onto itself, rolling it forward. "Little by little the dough is getting smoother."

He pushes the dough down into the thinnest possible disk, using his palm and putting all of his weight on it.

With a rolling pin, he rolls the dough into an oval and then a rectangle while dusting uchiko flour onto his board (uchiko is difficult to find, so Inouye recommends substituting cornstarch). He folds the dough, rolled to about one-sixteenth-inch thick, into quarters and cuts the noodles with a sharp Japanese vegetable knife (we tried it with a sharp chef's knife, which works well too; a heavy cleaver had too thick a blade). Using a slight rocking, or "pitching," motion, he quickly cuts exquisitely thin, even slices (skill comes with practice).

The soba is boiled for just a minute to 90 seconds. Save the cooking liquid, or sobayu, to add hot to the tsuyu dipping sauce to drink as a soup at the end of the meal. After the soba is boiled, it is shocked in an ice bath to stop the cooking and then dipped into another ice bath to remove all of the surface starch and complete the cooling (soba cooking is a series of hot and cold baths).

Soba connoisseurs eat their noodles unadorned, presented on a zaru, or flat wooden strainer, with a dashi- and soy-based dipping sauce on the side and condiments such as sliced green onions, grated daikon, wasabi and togarashi. A creamier dipping sauce is made with ground walnuts and tsuyu.

It's worth going to the trouble of making soba to get fresh, elastic, toothsome noodles that sing with the flavor of buckwheat. Most dried, packaged soba is made with as much as 70% wheat flour. Buckwheat flour should be the first ingredient listed (and when it is, it can be expensive). It may take a little practice, but all soba masters have to start somewhere.

"The first time I tried to make soba, they were not noodles," Inouye says. "But the second time, great results. I thought, maybe I'm a great soba maker."

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