Tanobe Somen is a traditional Japan

Tanobe Somen is a traditional Japanese dry noodle, produced by hand-stretching a noodle dough until it becomes thin strands of less than 1.3 mm in diameter. During the stretching process, the surface of the strand is coated with cottonseed oil to protect it from drying and adhering. The hand stretching process is carried out from October to March. Noodle strands thus obtained are dried, cut and bound, and packed into wooden boxes. Noodles are then stored in a storehouse until “Tsuyu” (The Japanese rainy season from Juni to July) is over. It is generally accepted that Tenobe-somen is superior in quality to machine-processed somen. One difference between the two kinds of somen is in their gluten distribution. In Tenobe somen well developed gluten bodies are elongated along a strand and starch granules are surrounded and supported by longitudinal gluten filaments in the strands. Another important difference is brought about by the storage process. Storage over the hot rainy season (“Tsuyu”) improves the quality of somen, resulting in a desirable cooked somen texture, with the disappearance of the rancid odor of cottonseed oil used in somen processing. The storage of Tanobe somen over “Tsuyu” is called “Yaku” and the texture change brought about by “Yaku” is the Yaku effect. Texture changes of this kind can be seen also in other dry noodles, including pasta, when they are stored for a long period. In this context, the Yaku effect include an early work of Uemura et al., in 1953 studies after 1970 include those of Nihara et al (1979)