I've been on a quest to figure out how to make hand pulled lamian (mein). I've researched a LOT about this and basically have a pile of contradictions. I'm going to attempt to summarize what I've found, what I think is bunk, what I think is important, and end with a long list of questions.

First, I'm talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_(noodles) or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_mian, and I'd be happy with almost any version of either. The best video I've found that demonstrates the pulling is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWrhO5jrEiU There are dozens of videos showing it, but this one has several key elements that I think are relevant.

First, the 'bounce and twirl', which from what I can tell as soon as you can get the dough to a consistency to do this maneuver should be most of the kneading. I've generally gone from rolling the dough into a thin log, doubling, rolling, doubling, to this bounce and stretch as soon as possible. Should I be trying to get to that point so fast, or do more kneading?

Around 2:38 right before he starts stretching he seems very specific about exactly how much dough is there. He goes to the trouble of twice re-adjusting the size, so I cna only imagine it's important...

He let's the dough relax between each pull - up 10-15seconds it seems. In another video (Gordan Ramsey learning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRH56FNrgoU&feature=fvsr) the translator makes a point of telling him to let it relax between each pull.

Several sources say that smacking the dough against a hard surface in between helps relax it between pulls, although the wikipedia article says that is just to remove excess flour. I've seen enough videos where the puller smacks the dough without any flour on the board, so I'm inclined to think it is to help relax the dough (?).

http://www.lukerymarz.com/noodles/ingredients.html recommends and mix of cake and all purpose flour, the addition of oil, and lye water/baking soda/kansui powder. He says that the lye water doesn't help stretchiness. Many other sources say baking soda or lye water do help stretchiness. I can't think of a reason why they would? However, one source I found says that it doesn't help to pull the noodles at all, but an end product with lye water will be more chewy, and that chewiness is essential in Chinese noodles. So far, the chewiness explanation for the lye water seems the most legit.

Pros of this recipe are that he clearly got it to work, and it seems to be where most American chefs turn to make hand pulled noodles. He says this was attempt #21. I like that, but A) I'd prefer a primary source that says this is the way to go, as opposed to trial an error. Perhaps more importantly B) How does cake flour make any sense here if we are looking to develop more gluten? and C) This has been being done since at least the 1500's and I presume they didn't have such a fine tuned way of getting the perfect mix. At most, I'd think they had different grinds of flour, but no way of measuring gluten content (am I wrong here?). However, I've also read that flour in China is naturally lower in gluten and the cake flour is to make up for that factor... ? That said, it is the recipe I can find...

http://www.tinyurbankitchen.com/2010/11/project-food-blog-round-7-hand-pulled.html Uses the same recipe, plus 15mins in a bread machine. Luke Rymarz says you only need about 20 minutes of hand kneading, she says 45.

Chef Tomm abuses the hell out of a perfectly good KitchenAid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBSTSKY_DQs&feature=related with the helpful advice of keeping your fingers out of the bowl. However, when he gets to the pulling phase he does describe it in more detail than anyone else I've found.

So, has anyone here succeeded with this? Is the cake flour essential? How long do you knead for? Do you do a rest between kneading and pulling?

Any thoughts are appreciated. I've gotten to about 8 'noodles' before tearing with all purpose flour, baking soda, and a lot of kneading. I'm thinking this would work eventually, but really want some tips with my obsession. Thanks in advance.

edit 1: I've been trying to work the dough very wet, almost taking it down to a batter, before kneading it to consistency again. I think that may be a mistake. I think that maybe it should be a drier dough that just gets worked forever until it becomes the proper texture.

edit 2 (10/19/2012): Added info, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XnLrzN4Pep8 this is probably the most detailed video as how-to's go I've found. He actually has an explanation for the cake flour (need to beat the gluten past the stage of resistance) and actually shows soup to nuts pulling the noodles from the dough he made. I found it in this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/67842-making-hand-pulled-noodles/page__st__90 Which is approaching an all out flame war. lol.

edit 3 (12/27/12): My quest continues. More info http://www.reddit.com/r/ramen/comments/11vnbp/does_anyone_have_a_tried_recipe_for_ramen_noodles/ is another tracking thread from someone else. Here http://norecipes.com/blog/homemade-ramen-noodle-recipe/ is the precise opposite argument saying that the kansui actually toughens low-gluten flour, thus, using a higher gluten flour should yield similar results.

New post from tinyurbankitchen sheds some light on this. There are two styles of noodles. Beijing noodles use high-gluten flour, and shanghai noodles use low gluten flour kensui. http://www.tinyurbankitchen.com/2011/05/art-of-hand-pulled-noodles-noodle.html

I think I finally have what I need to start experimenting.

edit 4 (Mid-january): Used AP and tried kneading for 2 hours. Still couldn't do a single pull wihtout breaking, but interestingly, when I finally gave up I couldn't send the dough through a standard pasta cutter. It rolled out fine, but was too stretchy for the cutter and it just made a pattern in it. I'm not sure gluten development is what we need here. \

edit 5 (Feb, 4 2014) - cross linking this: http://www.reddit.com/r/recipes/comments/1wzkiw/chinese_hand_pulled_noodles/