Louzhu Handmade Hollow Noodles

Louzhu Handmade Hollow Noodles

　　Louzhu Handmade Hollow Noodles are named after Louzhu Village in Lantian. The village is located about 2 kilometers north of Yushan Town, where roughly eight out of ten households make a living by producing these handmade hollow noodles. The noodles are made from premium wheat flour, mixed with salted water and kneaded until they achieve both softness and resilience. They are then hand-stretched into strands as fine as hair, with a hollow center. These noodles are chewy and resilient, have a smooth texture, and remain firm even after long cooking in boiling water. They have long been one of the traditional gifts that people in Lantian give to family and friends.

　　The production process of Louzhu noodles is complex, with the general steps as follows: 1. Milling the flour. High-quality wheat is first winnowed, sieved, washed, and dried before being ground into fine flour (using extremely fine milling tools). The flour yield is 65% per 100 jin (50 kg) of wheat. 2. Kneading the dough. The flour is mixed with salted water to form a dough, which is repeatedly pressed and kneaded by hand until it can be drawn into round strips (5–7 jin of salt is added per 100 jin of flour). 3. Rolling the strips. The kneaded dough is placed on a workbench and vigorously rolled into thick strips (about the diameter of a water glass and roughly a foot long). 4. Covering the strips. The rolled thick strips are coiled into a basin and covered with a damp cloth for about 40 minutes. 5. Twisting the strips. A bit of millet flour is sprinkled on the thick strips, which are then twisted into thinner strips about the width of a pinky finger and coiled back into the basin to rest for around 30 minutes. 6. Entering the trough. The rested thin strips are draped over bamboo sticks about the thickness of a finger and placed in a specially designed noodle trough (maintained at around 36°C for approximately one hour). 7. Opening the noodles. Each pair of bamboo sticks in the trough is placed onto a special rack and pulled downward from top to bottom, after which they are returned to the trough and rested for another half hour. 8. Placing on the rack. The noodles are removed once they have begun to hang and sway, and then mounted onto drying racks. 9. Racking and adjusting. The hung noodles are further stretched into finer strands. When they are about 70% dry, they are moved indoors, then placed back on the rack, and the lower ends are trimmed. 10. Cutting the noodles. The finished noodles are cut on the workbench into lengths of 5–8 inches, bundled into round bundles using paper strips, with each bundle weighing one jin, eight liang, or half a jin.