In article >, Bier de Stone
> wrote:

> I had an experience buying bucatini some time ago at the supermarket.
> These are hollow noodles and when I put them in a pot to boil, I found
> all the little eggs and baby weevil like insects floated at the top.
> That was my motive to make my own noodles.
>
> I purchased a noodle press and now I'm quite good at making fetuccini.
> My question is for noodle makers out there reading this. How does one go
> about drying a noodle so that they remain flat, and most importantly,
> don't stick to one another? My current method is lying them flat on a
> cookie pan and sprinkling flower on top of them so they next layer
> doesn`t stick. When I'm done, I put the pan in an old fashion gas pilot
> oven. The ongoing heat from the lit pilot is warm enough to dry the
> noodles from one day to the next.
>
> I've considered hanging them up to dry separately, allowing a single
> noodle its place on the line but haven't gotten to that point of
> experimentation yet. I'm using the 4 cup recipe and usually divide the
> dough in half for the noodles I dry per pan using the oven. I discovered
> if I try to do the whole mass of dough, sticking is unavoidable. Tell me
> I'm not doing this wrong because I need to dry a single layer at a time
> in the oven.

I don't make the fettucine width, but make the narrower size (for soup)
and cut them about 2 inches long. I use this recipe for making my
dough: 1 cup flour, some salt, 1 egg, about 1 tablespoon water. I make
it in the food processor (that's the important part). Doing it in the
fp lets me make a far stiffer dough than I could manage by hand or with
any other mixer. It is NOT in a ball in the bowl when I remove it from
the workbowl, but it sticks together in a ball when I press it that way.
I knead it a couple times on a board before letting it rest for at least
an hour before rolling (pasta machine) and cutting.

When I've cut the noodles, I put them on a towel-covered wire
cake/cookie-cooling rack and set them atop my heat vents (the
temperature in Minneapolis is -12 deg F right now and the furnace is on
:-) to dry. They dry easily overnight. Sometimes faster than
overnight. The stiffness of the dough is the secret -- as little
moisture as possible while still keeping the dough together.
HTH.

Note: Thirty years ago when my sister and made noodles, we didn't have
a food processor to make the dough. We mixed the dough by hand and hung
those skinny little soup noodles on a wood clothes drying rack sitting
on a bedsheet. I've got pictures. :-) I like my current method far
and away.
--
-Barb, <www.jamlady.eboard.com> Trip Report and pics added 1-13-05
"I read recipes the way I read science fiction: I get to the end and say,
'Well, that's not going to happen.'" - Comedian Rita Rudner, performance
at New York, New York, January 10, 2005.