Page 40 - FoodFocusThailand No.160 July 2019

SMART PRODUCTION

Among Thais, rice noodles are preferred in their various sizes Rice noodles are among many rice products popular
and forms, ranging from the freshly made kind such as wide rice in Thailand and many Asian countries. Good quality
noodles (sen-yai), to the semi-dried kind, such as rice stick noodles rice noodles possess white in color, elastically soft,
(sen-lek). Dried rice noodles, though, are more preferable as exports,
due to their light weight and longer shelf life. At present, the demand and musty-free.
for dried rice noodles in foreign countries has been constantly
increasing as a result of an ever-growing market for gluten-free
products. Made mainly from rice flour, rice noodles are naturally
gluten-free. However, when cooking, certain length of time is required
to cook the dried noodles back to their original texture, which is
understandably harder than that of fresh noodles. Another problem
found, regarding dried noodles, is the inconsistency of the noodle
strands, which is the result of the variability of raw materials and
production process. In order to get good quality noodles, then,
controls on raw materials quality and production process
have to be closely monitored.
Raw Materials
A) Rice: Use only rice varieties that contain
1 25% of amylose or greater. Amylose is the
integral part that constitutes noodles’ main structure
and elasticity. However, even rice varieties that
have almost similar percentage of amylose can
yield noticeably different texture to the noodles,
owing to other particular factors in the rice itself,
such as fine structure of starch, and its protein
content. Preferably, rice used in noodles production
should contain low percentage of protein so that
the resulting noodles have soft and smooth texture.
Another factor affecting the hardness and elasticity
of noodles is the age of rice. The optimum age of rice
used in making good noodles should be within 4-12
months old (Ratanasumawong, 2016) However, in
normal practice, rice used in making noodles is mostly
broken and a mixture of wide varieties and ages which

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