Chinese Fine Food (1) --- La Mian

We all know that Italian pasta is Garfield's favorite food, which is also the favorite of many people, but do you know La Mian, a type of hand-made or hand-pulled Chinese noodle is also very delicious?

Lanzhou La mian

Actually, when speaking of noodle, Chinese noodles have to be mentioned, and the world's oldest noodles was discovered by an archaeologist in Qinghai China.

Today in China, maybe many foreigners are very familiar with the "Lanzhou La mian" which can be caught at streets here and there, but does anyone know how "La mian" is made of?

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.

This dough is then pulled to about an arm span's length. The puller then makes a loop with the dough, joining the two ends into one clump of dough, and inserts his fingers into the loop to keep the strand from sticking to itself. Doing this, the pull has doubled the length of the dough while fractioning its thickness. This process is repeated several times until the desired thickness and quantity is achieved.

Daoxiao mian

The category of Lanzhou La mian is also includes "Daoxiao mian"（a type of knife-sliced noodles), and "Pao mo" (a type of steamed bread dipped in soup) as well.

He Fen (Thick rice noodle)

At the same time, Chinese noodle is also includes thick rice noodle ("He fen" in Chinese pronunciation), rice vermicelli or thin rice noodles("Mi fen" in Chinese pronunciation), and cellophane noodles or sweet potato vermicelli ("Fen si" in Chinese pronunciation).

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts in China