(jlachney)

Noodles in various contents, formulations, and shapes have been the staple foods for many Asian countries since ancient time. They can be made from wheat, rice, buckwheat, and starches derived from potato, sweet potato, and pulses. Noodles based on wheat are prepared mainly from three basic ingredients; flour, water, and salt. There exist two distinct types of wheat flour noodles based on the presence and absence of alkaline salts, regular salted noodles, and alkaline noodles. The basic process of dough mixing, sheet forming, compounding, sheeting/reduction, and cutting are essentially constant for all machine-made noodles. Noodle strands coming out of cutting rolls can be further processed to produce different types of noodles.