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Noodles
Beat 2 eggs without separating, add 4 tablespoonfuls of cold water and a pinch of salt. Stir in sufficient sifted bread flour to make a very stiff dough. Knead well, then roll out until in a sheet almost as thin as paper. Let lie on the board for about twenty minutes, until the outside is slightly dried so that it will not stick together when folded. If allowed to stand too long until quite dry it becomes brittle and breaks badly.
Roll loosely like a jelly roll. Use a very sharp knife and shave across the roll in thin shavings, remembering that when cooked they will swell to at least three times their first size. Shake and spread out on the board and let stand again for fifteen minutes. Should there be more than sufficient for immediate use spread them on paper or a shallow pan and let stand on the warming shelf until bone dry, when they may be put aside in jars to be used at any time in the same way as macaroni. Have ready a kettle of rapidly boiling salted water. In this sprinkle the noodles and keep at a rapid boil until quite tender-about twenty minutes. In the meantime dice 2 or 3 slices of stale bread and fry pale brown in a little butter. Drain the noodles and spread on a hot platter in alternate layers with the croutons, pouring over all a little melted butter. This simple dish may be varied by using a white or a tomato sauce, grated cheese or fried onions in place of the browned bread.
A plain egg-and-water noodle dough, cut by hand and served with buttered croutons. Almost everything here still works; the boiling time is the exception.
- Cooking timeTwenty minutes at a rapid boil will reduce fresh hand-cut noodles to mush. Fresh shavings this thin need 2-4 minutes; noodles dried bone hard and stored in jars need roughly 8-12 minutes. Taste rather than time them.
- How much flour"Sufficient" for 2 eggs and 4 tablespoons water is generally 2 to 2 1/2 cups of flour, but stop when the dough is genuinely stiff and barely tacky. A slack dough cannot be rolled paper-thin and will glue itself together in the roll.
- Bread flourThe original means strong white wheat flour, and it is the right choice: the extra protein lets the sheet go translucent without tearing. All-purpose works but rolls out less far.
- The hinge: the drying intervalThe twenty minutes on the board is the step that decides whether this succeeds. Leather-dry on the surface, still flexible inside. Under-dried and the jelly roll fuses; over-dried and it shatters under the knife, exactly as the text warns.
- Rolling by hand or machineA pasta machine taken to its second-thinnest setting gives the same result with less effort, and the sheets can be dried on a rack before rolling and cutting.
- Storing the surplus"Bone dry" is not a figure of speech. Noodles with any moisture left will mould in a sealed jar within weeks. Spread them in a single layer, give them a day or two in dry air, and they will keep for months.
- YieldTwo eggs' worth makes roughly a pound of fresh noodles, enough for three or four as a side dish, two as a main.
- The croutonsStale bread is called for because fresh bread soaks up butter and steams instead of browning. Dice it small and fry until pale gold, then layer it with the hot noodles; the recipe also allows a white or tomato sauce, grated cheese or fried onions in its place.
Noodles of this kind came into American cookbooks through German and Central European kitchens, where Nudeln made from egg dough are everyday food, and the buttered-crumb or crouton finish is often said to descend from the German habit of strewing browned breadcrumbs over boiled starches. The economy of the dish is easy to see: two eggs, a little flour and some stale bread feed a family, and the recipe deliberately makes more than is needed so the surplus can be dried and shelved. The closing note that dried noodles may be used "in the same way as macaroni" suggests that macaroni was familiar enough to serve as a point of comparison.