Sourdough Egg Noodles, or Pel'meni

I've been wanting to try out this recipe for at least a year, and only just now decided to do it. The recipe from the Weston Price Foundation's website is about how to make a fermented dough for making the Russian version of ravioli. The author translated a modern Russian cookbook and gave her take on how to do it, which I followed.

Pel'meni Dough

• 3 egg yolks (from pastured chickens)
• 1 c. of whey
• pinch of salt
• 2+ c. whole wheat flour (I ended up using 3 1/2 c.)

Filling:

• pre-cooked ground carrots, celery, and steak (that's what I had on hand, but you could just just about anything you could come up with)
• seasonings, like salt and pepper

1. Beat the egg yolks, whey, and salt together. Add to the flour in a bowl.

2. Mix/knead together and add additional flour until the dough is nice and elastic. This is what it looked like for me.

3. Let sit on the counter for a total of two to three days. After one day, knead in some more flour (I think I measured in about 1/4 c.) and let sit another day. The directions say to knead in some flour once or twice a day, but I just did at night before bed at the end of day one and day two. This is what the dough looked like after day one. It acted like bread dough, rising like it did!

4. After three days, I ended up putting the dough into the fridge because I didn't have time to deal with it right away, and it was really hot and humid here. When I finally got to it, I rolled out some dough, and made some filling to put in it, and rolled it up, pinching the edges closed.

5. Put on pan and freeze it for at least 30 minutes before boiling it in water for about 12 minutes, although you could boil it in chicken broth for more flavor. They puff up quite nicely in the water. Here is a picture of my final product. As you can see, I'm not really uniform in how I make it.

And here's my little helper. For some reason he wanted to wear a stocking cap. He wanted to be the one to put them on the pan.

I don't have a good final picture, because we were too busy eating them to think about pictures!

Verdict: They were very tasty and filling, but not dense and heavy. These would definitely be a good thing to make up ahead of time, and would make a quick meal. I'll definitely make these again! If you want more details of the recipe, go to the website I linked to above.