Lamian

Lamian is a type of Chinese noodle. Lamian is made by twisting, stretching and folding the dough into strands, using the weight of the dough. The length and thickness of the strands depends on the number of times the dough is folded. This unique method of making noodles originated in China. The Songshi Yangsheng Bu (Chinese: 宋氏養生部), which was written by Song Xu and dates back to 1504, has the earliest description of the method to make lamian.

Description

The hand-making process involves taking a lump of dough and repeatedly stretching it to produce many strands of thin, long noodle. Literally, lā, (拉) means to pull or stretch, while miàn (simplified: 面/traditional: 麵) means noodle.

There are several styles of twisting the dough but they all employ the same concept: a piece of dough is repeatedly stretched and folded onto itself in order to align the glutens and warm up the dough for stretching. Then it is rolled out to a workable thickness and cut into workable portions. The end pieces of the starting dough are never used because the glutens are not as aligned as the middle pieces.