

It took a village to bring these udon noodles into existence. The inspiration came from Marc Matsumoto at No Recipes who recently wrote about homemade udon. His description of how it was done made me feel like I should be able to tackle this without dying in the process. The detailed instructions came from Harumi Kurihara who taught me through her book how to knead the dough with my feet. And lastly, the list of ingredients came from the package of my favorite brand of frozen udon. [Since I can’t find the fresh kind in my area, don’t like the dry type as much, and can’t stand the unpleasant texture of the instant or almost-instant type that comes in plastic packages, frozen udon is the only choice.]



Basing the experiments on my favorite frozen udon was a risky business. This is because it contains tapioca starch which is missing from the majority, if not all, of the homemade udon recipes which I have found. Homemade udon noodle recipes by respectable sources call for either all-purpose flour, bread flour, or a combination of both. Most commercial udon noodles, except for the 3-4 that I’ve seen, also list wheat flour as the sole source of starch.

However, the risk is mitigated by the fact that I am replicating something I know I like . And if the people who make my favorite udon add tapioca starch into their bouncy and chewy noodles, I thought perhaps I should too. To quote the Barefoot Contessa, how bad can that be?

Not being Japanese or having grown up on authentic and/or homemade Japanese cuisine, I am not of the authority to say how or whether adding tapioca starch to udon noodles affects authenticity. It could be that most brands, sold at the same Japanese market, adhere to the true principle of udon making by using only wheat flour, whereas this brand, for whatever reasons, committed an irresponsible act of contaminating the once-pure udon gene pool with tapioca starch. And, Leela, not being an udon connoisseur, can’t tell the difference between good udon and not so good udon, so she has unwittingly chosen an inferior brand as her favorite. It’s possible. It is also possible that there are several types of udon some of which contain only wheat flour and some contain both wheat and tapioca flour. One is not superior to the other; they’re just different. If anyone knows anything about all this, please enlighten me. I’d like to learn more.

All I know is that I like these homemade udon noodles – whether or not I should. I have also experimented with a version that contained only bread flour and one that contained 70% bread flour and 30% all-purpose flour, and have found that the ratio of roughly 90% bread flour and 10% tapioca starch creates udon noodles that are not too tough and chewy and yet not too mushy and gummy — slurpably great, in other words.

Homemade Udon

Printable Version

Makes exactly 1.5 lbs of fresh noodles

Recipe tested with King Arthur bread flour