Using Home-made Vegetable Powder in Noodles

 Some of you may remember the small beets from my garden that I dried last September. Well, I think it was September. Anyway, the plan was to use them in noodles and soups to increase the nutrition level of the dishes. I'm finally getting around to reaching that goal. Slow yes, but it's better to be slow then never arrive. 

 

 Being an over achiever, I had to try two different kinds at once.The first bowl held beet powder and the second bowl, spinach. I ran out of room in the garden to grow spinach and so I dried some from the store. One does what they can.

With these two bowls that I added powder to, I found it necessary to add 1 Tablespoon of water. Oh wait, I haven't given you the recipe yet. I looked up on the Internet and they recommended 2 Tablespoons of vegetable powder per pound of dough. Too lazy to get out the scale, I just added 1 Tablespoon of powder to 2 eggs, 1 cup of semolina flour, 1/4 cup of unbleached white flour, and a nice drizzle of olive oil.

 Then in the third bowl I put in the 2 eggs, 1 cup of semolina flour, 1/4 cup of unbleached white flour, and a nice drizzle of olive oil but NO water. This was my plain dough. I thought it would look nice as a contrast on the plate.

After kneading each dough thoroughly until they formed a lovely ball, I placed them inside a plastic container to sit for thirty minutes. You should always let your noodle dough rest. My question now is will the rest cause the spinach and beet dough to become drier because the moisture in the dough is absorbing more of the powder? Therefore meaning my dough should have been a bit sticky to start with. I'll soon find out.

Hmmm... wonder if the beet dough will bleed into the water big time and stain the other noodles when cooking? Maybe I should just do a small mixture of the three colors and then go on from there depending on the results.

As for the wheat sprouts, they are coming along nicely and are at about a 1/4 inch long. In the morning, I'll start drying them on low in the dehydrator. I'll send pictures your way and tell you what I've learned about sprouting wheat. Yup, I was a bit surprised at the results. Plus the results on the vegetable noodle experiment.