I am by no means an expert pasta-maker, however, I am a person who loves homemade pasta, saving money, and making things from scratch. Therefore, my way of making pasta will suffice. Below is a simple, yet effective way to make pasta from scratch.
Place approx. 1 cup of flour and 2 eggs into your food processor. It is best if eggs are room temperature and X-large. You will have to tweak this to your flour/egg combination, but about 1 cup to 2 eggs is a good place to start.
STEP 1a
Turn on HIGH and let the machine go to town. Soon your mixture will look like this.
STEP 1b
Keep it goin' and hopefully it will then turn into this.
If it does not, you'll need to tweak. If it still looks like above, and won't ball up, you may need to add another egg and a wee bit more flour. If it is wet, you'll need to add more flour.
Basically, it should ball up, and will feel kind of like of play dough. After a while you'll get to know how it is supposed to feel, but play dough is a good indicator.
STEP 2
Repeat the first step a few times, so you have a bunch of balls. Each time you finish a ball, put it in a towel-covered bowl to sit (or on a baking sheet with a towel over it.) Generally I make 5 or so balls.
NOTE: Let me stress the importance of being patient here. If you take that dough over to the machine and start thinking you're going to make pasta, like you found a shortcut - think again. You will curse making homemade pasta and never want to touch it again. Believe me. Your pasta will break apart and be a big, ol' frustrating mess. Just wait. 20 minutes, that's all.
STEP 3
Now you want to grab a ball of dough. Take it to where your pasta machine is, and bring a little flour with you. I pat out my ball on a lightly floured surface, making it into an oval shape, flattening it and dusting it with flour.
NOTE: I halve my balls of dough so that they are about the size of a small orange. This is a step where you don't want to think BIG is best.
Run it through your machine on the thickest setting. Fold it in half, like the picture over there. Run it through again on the SAME setting, then fold it in a little pack like I did in the examples below. Run it through one last time, SAME setting. I hope I'm making sense, here.
The 1st fold
The "packet"
Let those sit, uncovered (they should each be less than a foot long), while you work on the rest of your dough. They should sit about 10 minutes or so, enough time to work on all your dough.
STEP 4
Okay, now comes to the fun (fun?) part. Grab the first foot-long you made, dust both sides lightly with flour, and start a'rolling. You pass it through once on each notch of the pasta maker, thinning it out more each time. I think mine has 7 or so settings. You can bypass the first setting, since it should be that thickness already.
STEP 4a
Each notch you go to will thin out the pasta even more, and make it long. This is where you will be glad if you didn't get overzealous with BIG balls in step 3
STEP 5
Lay each out. The examples I have here are laying them out on a clean table, or placing a towel over a card table and draping them over that. Surely you can get creative with this. The point is that they need to dry out a bit and not get crinkled.
STEP 6
These need about 20 minutes to dry. They shouldn't be stiff as a board, but should start to feel a little drier, not sticky. You'll notice the ones that are less sticky are easier to roll through.
You can either tear these to 18-inch pieces, or cut with a knife. If you're a real rebel, you can try to roll it through at the length it is.
STEP 6a
Here I am, making fettuccini. I like to cut mine so that it is easier to run through without making a mess and getting frustrated. After rolling through, I put the noodles on the table to begin to dry. You can gently use your fingers to separate them a little so they don't stick together in the drying process.
STEP 7
Finally - you're done!! Lay out all your pasta and let it dry. Sometimes I turn on the ceiling fan to speed this process up a bit (I do that in the above drying step, too - this is helpful if it is humid).
Every now and then come back and give them a gentle tossing to separate the noodlies.
Final Notes
Fresh pasta with balsamic vinegar,
romano cheese and olive oil. Yum.
Remember, fresh pasta is a different beast than the dry, packaged stuff you get at the market. When you cook fresh pasta, you boil it only for a few seconds. My kids demand to eat it soon after I make it (like, within the hour), so I put it in boiling water for around 90 seconds and remove.
When cooking dried, fresh pasta, test it as it boils. It will need several minutes at that point.
Fresh pasta contains RAW EGGS. Do not eat it uncooked.
For the best quality, USDA recommends storing dried pasta for no more than two years. Fresh pasta can be refrigerated for 2-3 days.
Rating Key (for reviews):
= Yuck. Won't be buying or trying that again.
- Not too bad, not too good. Lived up to expectations for me.
- Yay. Love it. Reccomend it.
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= Yuck. Won't be buying or trying that again.
