Fun with Flour

Yesterday we finished off the roast turkey breast, along with the dressing, gravy, and mashed potatoes. Small pieces of meat still clung to the bones. Of course I couldn’t let that go to waste, so I simmered the entire breast carcass in a pot of water.

The yield was good broth and enough meat to make turkey noodle soup and to give Annie a treat. After removing the bones from the broth I talked Dennis into chopping onions, carrots, and celery to cook in the broth with a little dried thyme while I picked the meat off the bones.

Now that the vegetables were simmering in the broth I turned to making whole wheat egg noodles. After pricing whole wheat noodles in the grocery store yesterday I had decided to make my own. I’ve made egg noodles before, but not using whole wheat flour. I had a hunch it would be an adventure and I wasn’t wrong.

I put two fluffed-up cups of whole wheat flour into a small mixing bowl and whisked in half a teaspoon of salt. Then I beat two eggs in a separate bowl and poured them into a well in the flour. (Aren't those eggs from our hens a beautiful yellow")

I stirred the eggs into the flour and began adding water, first three tablespoonsful, stirring, then more water, a tablespoonful at a time. Altogether I used seven tablespoonsful of water and that was a tablespoonful too much.

The dough was sticky.

Never mind, I liberally dusted my pastry cloth with unbleached flour and began to roll the dough, continually turning the dough over and dusting with more flour. All rolled out, the dough completely covered my pastry cloth.

Traditionally one should roll the dough up like a jellyroll and cut off thin slices. With this rather wet dough I decided to use my pastry wheel to slice the dough.

Then I ran the pastry cutter in the opposite direction to divide the long strips into shorter sections.

Back to the soup, I added the turkey pieces to the simmering broth. Next came the hard part. Because the noodle dough was so wet, I had to tease apart enough individual noodles to finish the soup, using about one-third of the dough.

Fresh egg noodles need to cook only a few minutes and soon we were sitting down to big bowls of soup.

That left a lot of noodles drying on the pastry cloth. To aid their drying, I flipped the dough, which came up in sections, to hasten the drying process.

This was messy, but fun. I have enough noodles left to make at least two more pots of soup, which will be welcome because our weather has turned mighty cold – predicted low of 8º tonight.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer