Help me make rye rue the day.

the noodles freak out and their texture isn't right (mostly that its a bit crumbly, and there's not enough spring in the noodles There is an excellent reason for this. Gluten is the thing that makes bread and noodles, well, bready and noodly. It's actually made of two substances - glutenin, which provides the elasticity and "spring" in bread and noodles, and gliaden, which provides the extensability, ie the stretchability of bread dough and noodles. Rye flour does not have a full gluten profile, it has no glutenin, only gliaden. So rye flour has the strechability, but no elasticity to bring it back or hold it together. This is why your noodles are crumbly and lacking spring. Heavy rye doughs are often described has having a "cake batter"-like texture for the same reason. How do you compensate for this? Well, there's a few different things you can do. 1) Use more white flour. Strong bread flour has a higher gluten profile, it can compensate for the lack of gluten in the rye. 2) Increase the gluten. Your vital wheat gluten can do this, experiment with increasing the ratio of it in your noodles. Be aware (with bread at least, I've no experience with noodles), that increasing the vital wheat gluten will not change a rye flour into a white flour; the texture will still be different. Also, you'll know about it if you use too much, lol, the dough will be very strange. 3) Change your recipe. Rye is not the only flour lacking gluten; indeed there are many. Buckwheat also has no gluten, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soba noodles are delicious and awesome. I would think about experimenting with some soba recipes - the techniques and ratios may be helpful to you, though obviously buckwheat and rye are different flours so it's unlikely to be 1 to 1, especially with the hydration (I believe the rye is likely to be a little thirstier). Best of luck!

Try adding just a tiny pinch of ground caraway to any recipe you try.

Ivan Orkin (of famed Ivan's Ramen) has a http://www.wnyc.org/story/ivan-ramens-toasted-rye-noodles/. Note: it has a very tiny percentage of rye (1/3 cup rye to 6 cups wheat) - but it would still be worth testing I think. I wonder if the toasting step affects the amylase mentioned above or if it's just a flavor thing.

Oops. The caraway really bring out the rye taste. I bake seedless rye, but without the added caraway it's not quite right.

First, make sure you're using the right kind of rye flour. There is a big big difference between dark rye flour and other kinds -- dark rye flour is completely unsuitable for most bread recipes and I imagine similarly for noodles, and yet that's what I tend to see in the stores most often. Xeney's reference page is excellent on the differences. smoke -- I have heard differently. As Xeney's page also mentions, rye amylases are a big problem for gluten development, which is if anything more important for noodles than for bread doughs. And the worst part is you can't just add more gluten to compensate, because the rye will actively block gluten formation! Poking around on the Internet, various people recommend some method of http://www.thefreshloaf.com//node/14058/dan-lepard039s-black-pepper-rye. I also know that http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580082688/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ likes using rye soakers for instance. These are things you might experiment with.

goingonit, both things are true: rye has no glutenin, and is also higher in amylases. Adding gluten does help, in my experience, but you're right that it will not turn a rye flour into a white flour. Additionally, in my experience (with breads, not noodles), heat soaking certainly does change the texture, however, I would not personally say that it improves gluten development, per se. Rather it leaves you with a 'smoother' texture. the dough is more jelly-like when uncooked, and less crumbly/firmer when baked. But you know I think this is a good suggestion, those qualities may work well for OP, on thought, as it's a similar texture I see in soba noodles - in fact, that's exactly what's recommended in this http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-soba-noodles-from-scratch-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-191038.

Caraway seeds. That's what actually gives rye bread its distinctive flavor, not the rye flour. Add to any recipe for instant rye taste.

Do you know about King Arthur's http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/deli-rye-flavor-4-oz?