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It was delish

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Best in the southwest :)

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• Combine water, sugar and kosher salt in a mixing bowl an whisk till salt and sugar are disolved
• Sprinkle yeast on top and gently mix in 
• Let sit for 5min or until it starts foaming. 
• Add flour and mix on low speed
  • You're probably going to want to use a stand up mixer with a dough hook
• When dough starts to come together take out of mixer and kneed it a bit with your hands
  • Probably not a necessary step, but before finishing with dough I like to know how it feels
• Take the bowl you just used, clean any remaining contents out, and lather the sides of the bowl with Olive oil 
• Put dough back in bowl, cover with plastic and let it sit in a warm place for 1 hour
  • DO NOT put in refrigerator, that will slow the yeast down

Preparing

• Preheat oven to 450F degrees
• Take 2 cookie sheets and line with parchment paper - Take the 1/4 stick of butter run it across the parchment paper - Set aside
  • Instead of oiling the parchment paper, you're using the butter in it's place. 
• Oil your workspace (preferably your counter top) with a *LITTLE* bit of Olive Oil 
• Take your dough and start cutting off pieces - The size of the piece is up to you, I wanted smaller pretzels so I made 10 small pieces
• Roll the pieces of dough out into a rope
  • Make a U-Shape with the rope
  • With both ends of the rope - Cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U
  • This is fairly easy
  • Repeat till all of the dough is used
• Whisk two egg yolks and 1 tbsp of Water in a bowl and set aside
• Bring 10 cups of Water and 2/3 cup of Baking Soda to a light-rolling boil

At this time all should be set. The dough is in a pretzel shapes, oven is preheated, yolks and water mix are in a bowl, the water and baking soda is at a light-rolling boil, and cookie sheets are lined with parchment paper and have butter all over the paper. It's time to make Pretzels.

Cooking

• Take Pretzel and put in water, the pretzel should float when ready
  • Should not take longer than 12-17 seconds
  • Be cautious, any longer and it could turn to mush
• Take Pretzel out of water and place on cookie sheet
• Take yolk and water mix and light brush the top of the Pretzel
• Sprinkle Pretzel Salt (or Kosher Salt if you can't find Pretzel salt) on top of Pretzel
• Bake until golden brown or 12-14 minutes

When you're all done you should have something like this

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For some time I've had a hankering to try my hand at noodle making and at some point make my own Top Romen. Well, yesterday I did it. I tried it and it' was o k, not bad, not great, just o k. I have a lot of learning and experimenting to do. 

For this endeavor I used these two URLS: 

Noodles - http://norecipes.com/blog/2010/11/30/homemade-ramen-noodle-recipe/ 
Broth - http://tashian.com/carl/archives/2009/01/homemade_ramen.php  

If this recipe is ever used, please read the "Putting it all Togther" section first.

Side Meat

• Thinly sliced piece of beef

Seasen the with salt and pepper and set aside 

Broth

• 2.5 Pounds of Pork Neck Bones
• 3 Carrots
• 1/2 Stock of Celery
• 1/2 Cup chopped Bell Peppers
• 1/2 Cup Onion

Take 5-6 quarts of water and bring to boil. Put Pork Neck Bones in boiling water and lower heat to a simmer. Let sit for no less than 4 hours. 

After 4 hours, turn off heat, and take out Pork Neck Bones and put to the side (there's a good dish you cane make with this). Put vegetables in and set heat to med-low, let simmer for about 15-30 min. vegetables

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Noodles

• 2 cups of Bread Flour
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp of Lye Water
  

Place flour in a mixing bowl. Combine the 1 tsp of Lye Water with Water in a cup and mix them together. Mix water and flour together in the mixing bowl and start mixing, feel free to use a mixer with dough hook. When the dough comes together, form it into a ball and let it sit for about 20 min.

One of my failures in this was the noodles, tasted great but I couldn't get the noodles thin enough. I saw a couple videos that show how to roll and cut, however the dough was not stretching enough to use these techniques (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEq5sDFzBuc). I later learned I should have used wheat flour. 

To strech out the noodles I used a roller and did the best I could and used a pizza cutter to cut into thin strips. 

Putting it all together
Here is a list of how it all came together

• Put Pork Neck Bones in water to make broth
• Let simmer for about 2 hours
• Start on making Noodles
• Take Pork Neck Bones out of broth and set aside
• Put vegetables in broth and bring to simmer
• Roll dough out and start cutting into noodles
• Take vegetables out of broth and set aside
• Put side meat in broth to "shock cook"
  • Since it's thinly cut it'll cook very fast in the broth
• Take meat out and place in bowl
• Put noodles in broth and let cook
  • Be careful - Cook for to long and the noodles will be ruined.
• As you take noodles out, put in searving bowls
• When done, put broth in searving bowls and put side meat in
• Serve 

This was my first attempt at Japanese Noodles and will not be my last. Next attempt will be an all beef broth.

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