pointclick

I found this video which covered the entire process from beginning to end in 15 minutes: I guess kneading direction doesn't matter. Just knead like a noodle pressing machine. And he applied PengHui water twice in the video.

@DaikathYes, when the dough is so sticky, dusting with flour doesn't help at all. However, I think 100g water to 150g flour is too much. In my case 50% water ratio would make it sticky enough when pressed with a noodle machine. I think now I know what is the purpose of alkaline water. In one of my attempts, a few drops of alkaline water made the 50% water ratio dough much less sticky to the degree that it became completely operable and could be pulled evenly -- the most successful I've ever tried.

Part 3 of the same video is very helpful: It shows that with a good dough even a novice can pull really thin and even noodles (much better than I did). I suspect that they add alkaline water to make the dough less sticky. In my attempts when the dough was in a pullable state it was so sticky than it couldn't be operated on. Yesterday I added some alkaline water and it did reduce the stickiness which made the dough more pullable.

I'm a big fan of hand-pulled noodle and my previous attempts in the past few years all failed miserably. However, recently I started to get much better results. Today for the first time the noodle became cookable and I would say the taste was actually better than those restaurants in both China and US. I still need to perfect my pulling technique, but I would like to share my findings here. First, I use Hummer high-gluten flour which has about 14% gluten. I tried bread flour with 12% gluten with extra gluten added to bring it to 15%, but apparently the Hummer one did much better. I know this contradicts with most recipes you can find online where it always calls for a mix of cake flour and all-purpose flour. Believe me, I tried those recipes before; while I agree low-gluten flour makes pulling easier, the taste is completely different after you cook it in the boiling water. Second, I only added 50% water and nothing else. Salt will make the dough harder (equivalent to raising the gluten content); alkaline water does the same, while Penghui (蓬灰) is basically alkaline water plus sulfite which acts as a dough relaxer. I don't think these ingredients are bad; it is just that they would introduce too many variables which make the experiments less controllable. Third, I used a noodle machine to press the dough. Mine was bought from Korea but I believe a Kitchenaid roller attachment should work too. This is the most important part I think. While Chef Tomm (http://www.cheftomm.com/chinese-hand-pulled-noodles/) found that beating the dough in the mixer at speed 4 will make it quite pullable, a noodle machine has the same effect without the risk of damaging your mixer. 50% water dough was a bit hard at the beginning, but after a few passes through the noodle machine it became very soft, sticky, and stretchy. I then pressed it to make a thin sheet (the thinner the better result, but you can't go too thin since it is so sticky), and then rolled it into a cylinder and started pulling. The pulling had been done quickly because I found that it became less pullable after a short rest. Let me know if you have any questions.