We expected a bit of trial and error, perhaps a snafu or two. We hoped we'd end up with some good pasta, or at least a good story to share with you. Never did we imagine that making pasta would be so...well...easy!
We only made straight egg pasta a few times in culinary school, and I always remember it being a very laborious process. I'm guessing those memories are slightly colored by the general anxiety and sleep-deprivation I was experiencing those days. Plus, my personal standard of excellence is probably a bit lower than my chef-instructor's...
From start to finish, making this pasta took us about an hour and a half, including 30 minutes in the middle to rest the dough. I mixed the dough and kneaded it by hand, used a hand-cranked roller to make the pasta sheets, and then hand-cut the pasta into wide pappardelle-esque noodles. During cooking, the noodles floated to the top very quickly, but I let them boil for a few extra minutes to cook out the raw taste.
My guests and I ate about half the noodles straight out of the bowl with just butter and salt, but managed to save enough for dinner. These noodles were irresistibly chewy and made a nice backdrop to the beef stew we served as our main course. So good. We'll definitely be making pasta more often from now on!
Here are some afterthoughts:
• Have everything set out. We had the roller at one end of the counter with the cutting board right beside it. A sheetpan waited at the very end for the finished pasta. We had our tub of flour right in the middle for easy access at all times.
• Once you start to roll out the pasta, use more flour than you think you need. I stressed this in our tutorial last Friday, but apparently I have trouble following my own advice - there were a few close calls with sheets of pasta sticking to itself while waiting to be cut into ribbons!
• Work in small batches. This is also something that we mentioned last week, but I think it bears repeating. It would be easy to look at the little softball-sized piece of dough in your hand and think, "Ah, heck. Why not do it all in one go?" But that dough stretches out a lot. Even working with a quarter of the dough at a time, by the time we got to the thinner settings, we had two feet of pasta lying on our counter!
• If you're using a hand-crank pasta roller like ours, it really helps to have another person. I started off by myself, but quickly called in reinforcements to help turn the crank and feed the dough through the machine. Boy, do I miss those fancy Kitchenaid pasta attachments from culinary school...
• It's not necessary to always go down to the thinnest setting. We rolled our pasta to the second-to-last setting, and I would have liked it a little thicker. As a side note, I also would have liked the noodles a little shorter, but I think getting the hang of that will just be trial and error.
Did anyone else make pasta this weekend? How did it go?
Related: Dry Pasta vs. Fresh Pasta: What's the Difference?
(Images: Emma Christensen for the Kitchn)
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Not last weekend, but next weekend I would like to!
I got the ravioli attachment for my pasta machine and can't wait to try it!
Mmmm. Fresh pasta. Getting my pasta machine was one of the best investments ever. I've found that tea towels are my friend when making pasta. I usually roll out all of the sheets before cutting them, and I'll put them on lightly floured tea towels...I've had very bad luck with the sheets of pasta sticking to each other and with the tea towels I can stack the various sheets (between the towels) without worrying about sticking.
i also made pasta this weekend. I'm to the point where i hardly ever buy dry at all. this weekend i did an experiment where i added fresh basil to the dough and it came out really great! the basil taste was present but not overpowering as i had feared.
i agree that another person helps for the hand-crank. Fortunately, i have two boys who love to help!
and i NEVER roll my dough all the way. The thinnest i ever go is 6 on my machine. my biggest problem is that i'm not happy with the cutting thicknesses. the thick is too thick and the thin is too thin!
Oddly, my daughter (2.5) and I did make pasta this weekend. Some hand-rolled noodles on Saturday, then squash/hazelnut/caramelized-onion ravioli on Sunday.
My gripe is that the pasta machine is impossible to attach to the counter, and so cranking the machine is not easy at all. I wish they made one with a suction cup attachment (ala the apple peeler/slicer/corer) - it works so much better.
Regarding pasta sticking to itself - I had that problem the first couple of batches. I found the best remedy wasn't necessarily to add more and more flour while rolling (very messy), but instead to knead the dough a lot - adding flour when the dough ball became tacky - until it no longer became tacky. At that point (after resting), very minimal flour (maybe a teaspoon) was needed to roll out the sheets down to the thinnest setting without any sticking problems.
The hazelnut filling (if you care) was super simple, but very rich tasting:
2 C delicata squash (scraped from baked halves)
1 ea. large onion, diced and caramelized with 2 cloves garlic
3/4 C roasted hazelnuts, chopped fine
2 ea. eggs
salt and pepper to taste
mix and use as filling. enough for 40-50 ravioli
i got the pasta maker attachments for my kitchenaid, and made pasta over the weekend too. it started off a little bumpy (my dough was too dry), but once i got it sorted out... the BF and i were both dually impressed!
Any fresh pasta recipe suggestions that don't include egg? I'd love to make this one but have an egg allergy. :(
i really want a pasta maker. any suggestions? i have a kitchen aid mixer from the 1950s, so i probably can't use an attachment.
thanks!
I also can't really eat egg pasta. There's a good recipe for eggless fresh pasta in Mark Bittmans "How to cook everything vegetarian", the trick seems to be using hot, almost boiling water. I don't remember the proportions, but try a cup of flour, make a crater as if going to add eggs, add a little oil and salt and then pour hot water in small amounts and whisk with a fork/knead, adding more water until you get a dough more or less the consistency of pasta dough. (If adding to much water it will be too sticky to roll. I don't remember what's in the recipe, but I would start out something like 1 cup flour, 1 Tbsp olive oil, 1/4 cup hot water and only add about 3/4 of the water to start with, adding more as needed.)
Sorry for long post, but eggless pasta was something I tried to do for years before finally managing to get it right. It's not the same as with eggs, but for those of us who can't really eat egg pasta it's sooo much better than no fresh pasta, no?
Do pierogies count?? If so, they turned out really well, especially for a first try. I made a basic filling: extra sharp cheddar, potatoes and caramelized onions. As I rerolled the dough though, after cutting out the first batch of pierogie rounds, it got increasingly hard to work with... less elastic and more dense. Is there a way to combat that phenomenon? The first twenty or so were perfect.
Hello, kitchenplay. Can you point me toward a good pierogie recipe? They are alien to Southerners, at least this one, but my grandson (he's playing hockey in Ontario) has fallen for them, and I'd love to give them a try.
I made pasta for the first time this weekend and I was also amazed at how easy it was. We have the same roller/cutter and made fettucini with a puttanesca sauce. I also rolled it to the next to last setting, but I think thicker would be even better. My recipe called for 2 cups flour and 2 eggs, but I had to add some water because it was too dry. I'll try 3 eggs next time. Even with the alteration it was delicious and I fear I will never love dry pasta again!