Once you’ve had fresh homemade pasta, you will be spoiled for life. Thankfully, I have an Italian husband who became obsessed with mastering the art of pasta making. All I had to do was ply him with wine to get him to sit and tell me the step-by-step instructions to his pasta mastery. A quick note, 00 flour is very important to this recipe. If you use all purpose flour, your pasta will not come out the same. You will need a pasta roller to do this. We have the pasta attachment for our KitchenAid mixer which works beautifully.
Ingredients
2 cups 00 flour plus more to add as needed
3 jumbo eggs (its very important to use jumbo size)
pinch of salt
Preparation
Place flour in a pile on large flat clean surface. Make a well in the middle of the pile of flour, then crack eggs into the middle of the well. Make sure the eggs do not spill over the sides of the well. Add a pinch of salt. Poke each egg yolk with a fork and gently whisk the eggs. Then slowly incorporate the flour into the eggs with the fork until you get a wet dough. Start lightly kneading the dough with your hands as you incorporate the rest of the flour into the dough. Knead the dough for about 1 minute more until all of the flour on your work surface has been incorporated. The dough should be smooth, springy and no longer sticky at this point. Be careful not to over knead the dough or it will become too tough. Then form a ball with the dough, wrap it with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
Take the dough out of the refrigerator, and break it into 4-5 smaller balls. Have a cup of flour next to you to add when the dough gets sticky. Flour a work surface and working with one ball at a time, flatten the dough with your hand into a disk. Then put the disk through your pasta roller at the largest setting. Fold the pasta sheet in half, and run it through again. Repeat this step 4-5 times. If your dough starts to get sticky, sprinkle it with flour. Once you have a smooth sheet that is not sticky, move the roller to the next lowest setting and run the sheet through once. Don’t fold it over. Continue to lower the setting and running through the sheet until you get to the desired thinness. For pappardelle or linguine, thickness should be at setting 6 (if your pasta machine’s thinnest setting is 8).
After you get your pasta sheet to your desired thickness, you can cut the pasta to the width you want. You can use a pizza cutter and make odd shaped pasta and you’ll have maltagliati pasta or use one of the cutters that come with your pasta machine for spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine.
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Salt the water and add pasta. Fresh pasta cooks in about 1-3 minutes depending on thickness. Once the pasta is cooked to the desired doneness, turn off the heat and pull your pasta out with a strainer. The pasta should be al dente, meaning that it should still have a bite. Do not rinse the pasta. Put it into whatever sauce you have prepared, toss gently and serve.
Where to buy key ingredients:
00 Flour
