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Sifted flour

Playing with dough has always had a calming effect on me. There was my mother's dough, which she used to make apple pies. What impressed me about her dough was the enormous amount of butter she used.  She never measured. She didn't even go by a recipe. Yet, when it came to how much water to add to the dough, she was very careful. I believe she even used a measuring cup. She instinctively knew what can make or break a pie crust.  

Sifting the flour

LESS IS MORE

Trying to figure out the optimum amount of water to add to the flour, Kasuiritsu, is one of the critical tasks in soba making.  In January, Tokyo was drier than the rest of the year, ranging from 25% to 35% humidity. So the amount of water we used to make soba ranged between 41% to 45%. Most of the time, we stayed around 41-42%. We relied on the scale and the measuring spoon. A small error  can ruin your soba and your day. There was no formula for figuring out the optimal amount of water for making soba.  Experience helps. Akila said he did not believe in adding more water than necessary because it affected the flavor and texture of the dough. Less is more, he kept saying. All I wanted at this point, was to turn out something that looked like dough, and not a crumbly mass of flour.

LET THE FLOUR TAKE A JOURNEY

After the greetings and lecture, Akila made one batch of soba to demonstrate h is technique. I stood next to him and watched his hand movements.  With soba, the initial mixing of flour with water is done mostly with your finger tips.  Like a piano player who is playing with his finger tips standing on the keyboards. the soba maker too moves the tips of his fingers quickly, making sure that there is no flour that is sitting still.  The hand movements are circular, fingers spread apart. My hands are small to begin with so it isn't easy to keep the flour moving in the large bowl. "Let the soba take a journey," Akila would say. It reminded me of the old saying, "Send your loving child on a journey." which means that the child will mature better by learning to stand on his own feet. Same thing with soba.  The only diffference was that soba had to take the first part of this journey in 30 seconds.

The fingers moves quickly to bind the flour with water. 

LET'S NOT WASTE FOOD

Any flour that was stuck on the fingers were wiped off and combined with the dough in the bowl. The whole idea of cleaning the bowl and removing the flour on your finger tips  were to keep flour waste to a minimum.  In class, we used a large and heavy stainless steel bowl. I could hardly lift it.  The traditional soba bowls, Hachi, are made of wood and are much lighter and more beautiful but Akila explained to us that it is difficult to find a tree trunk that is suitable for making a Hachi, bowl, plus the life span of such bowl is not very long. The stainless steel bowls are friendlier for the environment and more sanitary.

Once the initial mixing was done, the next step was to continue mixing but this time with the heel of your palms.  This step ensures that every cell of buckwheat is fed with water and there are no dry cells left. As you work the flour, you can feel the moisture in the flour building.  The smell of buckwheat is slightly yeasty. Now I am ready to bunch the flour together and start kneading, Kone.

GLUTEN FREE 

Buckwheat flour contains no gluten. Gluten is the Latin word for "glue". It is the glutens in wheat flour that gives kneaded dough its elasticity. So how do we bind soba if there is no gluten?   

When flour is mixed with water and kneaded, the process adds strength to the dough, elasticity and helps bind the flour together wihtout relying on gluten.   At the Academy, we practiced making 100% buckwheat soba, Kikouchi, and Nihachi, 2:8 ration of all-purpose wheat flour and buckwheat flour, and some other variations. I found Kikouchi the tastiest of all Soba. 2:8 ratio was by far the easiest to handle while retaining good flavor and adding some elasticity to the dough.

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  The Flour combined with water is darker and mosit.

It is gathered in the middle of the bowl and ready to be knead.

I will talk about more about kneading, next in Flour days: Living and Kneading in Tsukiji (4)