Ramen noodle dough calculator
Alkaline ramen noodles at 40% hydration: bread flour, water with baked baking soda, a little salt, rolled to 1–1.5 mm.
Ramen noodles are the driest dough in this catalog: 40 g of water per 100 g of flour, plus an alkaline salt that turns them yellow, springy and faintly eggy. The dough never looks like dough. A pasta roller presses the crumbs into a sheet.
How it works
Kansui at home
Kansui is the alkaline mineral water of ramen; Sho Spaeth substitutes baked baking soda, ordinary baking soda held in a low oven until it turns into sodium carbonate. Six grams on 400 g of flour (1.5%) dissolve in the water together with 4 g of salt, and that water goes into the flour a third at a time in a food processor or mixer until the mix looks like damp pebbles. Spoon the baked soda, do not touch it; it is caustic.
From crumbs to sheet
The crumbs rest 30 minutes, then go through the widest setting of the roller, get folded and passed again, three times, until they cohere. Then progressively thinner, down to 1–1.5 mm, and through the spaghetti cutter. Flour or starch between the strands, and loose nests.
Rest, then a short boil
The noodles are better made a day ahead and keep three days in the fridge. Boil in unsalted water, about two minutes for hand-cut and a minute and a half for machine-cut, then straight into hot broth. Test a strand cut into pieces at ten-second intervals from 1:30, and subtract ten seconds for the time it spends in the bowl.
Sources & methodology
Every percentage in this calculator traces to the published sources below — nothing is invented. Where respected sources disagree, the default sits inside the documented range.
- Serious Eats — Homemade Ramen Noodles (Sho Spaeth) — The anchor: 396 g bread flour + 4 g vital wheat gluten / 160 ml water (40%) / 6 g baked baking soda (1.5%) / 4 g salt (1%), four portions rolled to 1–1.5 mm.
- Serious Eats — 35%-Hydration Homemade Ramen Noodles (Sho Spaeth) — The drier end of the water band: 140 ml on the same 400 g (35%), with 3 g baked soda and 1 g potassium carbonate, pressed into a plank and rested cold for 6–24 hours.
- Serious Eats — How to Make Ramen Noodles From Scratch — The reasoning behind the numbers: most ramen sits near 35% hydration, 39% and up is what a home pasta roller copes with, and a portion is about 130 g of noodles.
FAQ
Why 40% and not 35%?
Most shop ramen sits near 35%, but Spaeth found anything below 39% hard to handle in a home roller, so 40% is the version he recommends. His 35% recipe presses the crumbs into a plank and rests it cold for 6–24 hours before rolling. The band on the water row is those two recipes.
Do I need the vital wheat gluten?
The recipe adds 4 g to 396 g of King Arthur bread flour, one of the highest-protein bread flours, to push the protein higher still; the base rows show the split. A weaker flour makes a softer noodle.
Can I skip the alkali?
Then it is a plain wheat noodle, not ramen: the alkali gives the colour, the spring and the flavour. Spaeth’s 35% recipe also adds 1 g of potassium carbonate, which is closer to commercial kansui.
How much per bowl?
About 130 g of noodles a serving, per the Serious Eats guide; the 400 g recipe makes four.