I have been learning and working on creating Lamian (拉麵) for a year now, and it has been quite an adventure! I had little experience working with dough coming into this, so despite many failed attempts, I've been learning a lot. But I'm not quite there yet. Let me explain my problem and I will then get to my question.
I've looked at many tutorials for hand pulled noodles, many with wildly different recipes. Some say lye water, some say baking soda, some say just plain flour and water, some say oil, some say high gluten flour, some say low gluten flour etc. One person online even claims to have succeeded with lamian using 00 flour (link here)! I have noticed that all these recipes have achieved success for the people making them, so it occurred to me that there really is no "correct" lamian recipe; instead, it's all in the technique.
After many completely failed attempts, I've managed to be able to create dough that will stretch evenly and easily at first. However, after just one or two stretches, the dough will start to resist the stretch, even pulling back. Resting the dough after a stretch helps some, but after a while, even that doesn't really cut it. My main question is: Why does this happen? The followup question is: What can I do to prevent this from happening?
The following are just some references that I used to help develop my technique or generally better understand what's going on in the dough in the lamian making process. NOTE: Unfortunately due to being new here I can't put more than two links, so I'll just describe a few of the sites
Uyghur Method, linked above.
Luke Rymarz's website, which is pretty well known among people who have tried to make lamian
I did look through previous Seasoned Advice questions on hand pulled noodles, none of them seem to directly address the problem I'm having. However, some of the answers have given helpful insight into ways that I can try to improve my technique.
This thread in a cooking forum has also been very helpful to me.