Fresh Pasta

You can make fresh pasta with all purpose flour, some eggs, measuring cups, your hands, a rolling pin, and a knife. But I went all out instead and partly followed a real Italian recipe, which added a KitchenAid, a kitchen scale, and a pasta roller. I added the pasta cutter.

Serves 3–4.

Ingredients

By volume

• 3 large eggs
• ¾ c. + 2 T. durum wheat semolina
• ¾ c. + 2 T. tipo 00 fine white flour

By the egg

• 1 large egg (about 50 g.)
• 35g durum wheat semolina
• 35g tipo 00 fine white flour

Directions

The Dough

1. If weighing, zero your scale with the KitchenAid bowl on it.
2. Crack all the eggs into the bowl.
3. Optionally, weigh the egg in grams and multiply the total by 0.7. This is the weight you will use for each of the flours.
4. If measuring the flour by volume, do it in another bowl and mix them together, then add to the eggs. Otherwise, zero the scale and add the chosen weight of semolina to the KitchenAid bowl. Zero again and add the same weight of tipo 00 flour.
5. Mix on setting 1 with the standard paddle attachment or a dough hook until the eggs are incorporated.
6. Knead with a dough hook on setting 2 for five minutes, scraping the dough down from the hook as necessary.
7. Remove and knead by hand for a minute.
8. Knead in the mixer again for two minutes at setting 1.
9. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest about 20 minutes.

The Pasta Making

1. Divide the dough into three parts (or into as many pieces as eggs).
2. Set your pasta machine to its widest setting (usually #1).
3. Take a pre-divided piece of the dough, leaving the rest wrapped.
4. Flatten it out into a rectangle with the short side less than the width of your machine. Dust it with flour if it’s sticky.
5. Feed it through the rollers, short side first.
6. Fold it up like a letter, dust again if necessary, and feed it through short side first again.
7. Repeat the folding and rolling process four or five times at the same setting.
8. Set your pasta machine to its next narrower setting (usually #2).
9. Run the dough piece through once, without folding but dusting if necessary.
10. Continue reducing the roller width and rolling once until you reach your desired thickness. (Check your machine’s manual for the recommended setting to use with its cutters.) You may need to cut the piece to half its length if it’s getting too long to handle (or to eat later).
11. Repeat the whole business with each piece of dough, letting the others rest on an adequately floured surface.

You don’t need to cut or boil fresh lasagna noodles, though some people do boil them. Also stop here for ravioli; you’re on your own until I write some up.

The Pasta Cutting

1. Cut any really long strips in half.
2. Dust the piece(s) with flour and run them through the cutter. (If they stick to one another and/or accordion up under the cutters, try more dusting or resting time.)
3. Catch the pasta on the way out of the cutters, then hang it on a pasta rack or lay it on a cookie sheet with lots of semolina flour to keep it from sticking.
4. Brush off any excess flour before cooking or freezing.

For odd shapes, cut them with a knife instead.

The Pot

1. Boil adequate water and salt it well.
2. Add the fresh pasta.
3. Quickly return to a boil.
4. Cook for 2–3 more minutes, depending on size.

Variants

Most recipes go all tipo 00, or all all-purpose flour.

Ideally, you’d weigh the flours together separately and mix them before adding to the eggs.

Ideally you’d use a spiral dough hook, but those only work with heavy-duty models of KitchenAid mixers. The regular “C-shaped” hook works fine.

The original recipe said to dust with the semolina flour only, but I thought the tipo 00 worked well, at least in the machine.

You can try to form nests; they’re handy for freezing. Cook frozen pasta 5–6 minutes without defrosting.

Spinach and tomato paste are popular additions, but I haven’t found a good recipe; even when they sound precise there’s still a step of winging it somehow.