Homemade Pasta is fairly easy to make. It’s amazing how much better fresh pasta tastes. You can cook it immediately or dry it to use later.
This year rather than making the usual new year’s resolutions like losing weight, saving money, etc. I decided to make fun goals. I love to cook and bake, but there are some things that scare me. I think we each have our own things that you want to do but you are afraid you will fail so you just stick to what you know. I wanted to get out of that rut and not have to hear my husband say one more time that he wanted me to make pasta. So I have set a goal for each month to make a food that I find hard or at least I think will be hard.
For January, I decided to tackle pasta. I kept putting off. I waited till the 30th to try it. I really should start earlier in the month so if I do fail, I have more month to try again. Thankfully making pasta did go fairly well. I searched on Pinterest for instructions and got to it.
Homemade Pasta
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour, 400 grams
- 4 large eggs
Instructions
- Place flour on counter in a mound, dig a well, and crack the eggs into the well.
- Whisk the eggs with a fork and gradually pull flour into eggs. As dough gets thicker you may want to use your hands.
- Once dough is a ball begin kneading. You will have some flour left over when you begin kneading. You will pull most of it in as you knead.
- Knead for 5 - 10 minutes. If it becomes crumbly add a little bit of warm water.
- After kneading, wrap in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for 20 - 30 minutes.
- After kneading, wrap in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for 20 - 30 minutes.
- Remove from refrigerator and cut into 4 pieces. Roll into balls. One at a time take a ball and smash.
- Flatten it enough to fit into the dough roller and dust the dough with flour. I used the pasta attachments for my Kitchenaid mixer.
- Starting with the dough roller at the largest width. Turn mixer on and run dough through roller, fold dough, dust with flour, and run through dough roller again. Repeat 4 to 7 times.
- You will begin to see the dough change and the texture improve. Once the dough looks smooth, change the width on the roller to the next smaller width.
- Dust the dough with flour and run it through. Keep doing this until it is the thickness you want. My widest width was a 1 and it goes down to 8. I stopped at 5. After I got to 3, I used a pizza cutter to cut the dough in half because it got too long to work with easily.
- After I got to the thickness I wanted, I changed attachment to the fettuccine attachment. I ran the dough through it to cut it.
- You can cook them right away or dry them and cook later. Fresh pasta will cook very quickly.
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The next part I haven’t perfected yet. I laid my pasta out on a sheet pan covered in parchment paper. The noodles stuck together. I guess I need to get a drying rack.
I put the noodles in the spare room to dry. I live in a very dry climate so they dried over night. I made chicken fettuccine alfredo the next night. They took a little longer to cook than I expected. But they were sooo good.
I felt pretty confident after making the pasta. I cleaned up and began to clean the attachments with the brushes that were provided. Not having any directions, I turned on the fettuccine attachment and started brushing. The brush got sucked into the rollers. I tried to fix it, but wasn’t successful.
Hopefully my husband can fix it. There is nothing like ruining a good mood with breaking an expensive piece of equipment.
Hopefully February’s goal won’t end the same. I haven’t decided but I think I’m going to try making mozzarella. It might scare me even more than pasta.
Want to check out my other goals for the year? You can find them all on this post.
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So…dying to know…was the equipment saved? I am going back and forth over the noodle fence on whether to buy the pasta attachments for my Kitchenaid. I have an electric pasta machine and a hand powered pasta roller that has a cutter with it. I love the few times I have tried my pasta machine, but not so enthused with the roller. Part of that though is because it doesn’t currently fit my counters. When I get my new counter tops, the machine will attach properly and I will try it again. Also, can’t wait for the smooth surface of the new counters to try mixing on the counter. LOL
We still have gotten around to fixing it. I need to find it. After moving, it kinda got lost in the shuffle. I’ve just switched to making spaghetti instead. I want to get an extruder. I want to try making shells or penne.
I found a really good buy at Chefs Catalog for a pasta machine that is an extruder. It has several shapes, I made rigatoni, it was awesome. I liked that it all mixed in the machine and then extrudes. Except I had really sticky dough and had to keep adding flour to get to where it worked well in the cutter. My hand turn roller worked a little too well. It doesn’t attach to my current counter top correctly so I adapted and attached it to my pull out cutting board, but it would only attach side ways or backwards so was very awkward to try and put dough in, crank, feed and lead the rolled dough out with only two hands, needed three or four. When I get my new kitchen up and running, pasta making is on the top of the list to try again.
I sure hope your new kitchen is going to be finished soon. It sounds like quite an inconvenience. I will have to check out the one in Chefs Catalog. Kitchenaid has one that attaches to your mixer. I’ve been eyeing that one for a while.
I have been thinking about the KitchenAid pasta attachments myself as I have pretty much all the other attachments. Only thing is that they are pricey and you have to buy several attachments, such as various cutters, roller, ravioli maker, pasta press. You can save a little and buy the pasta set, includes the roller, cutters and ravioli maker, but that only makes the flat noodles. They do sell a pasta press which makes the shaped pasta, but not a shell. I went with a pasta extruder machine since I already had a roller/cutter, hand crank power. It mixes the dough, then extrudes in shapes, all except the shell which I just have to buy an extra dye for. Love it and I caught it on sale for way cheaper than the KA attachment. But I will say this, if I ever decide to make pasta again, or more often, I am SO BUYING a drying rack. You can read my post, http://blairblogproject.blogspot.com/2012/08/pasta-lesson.html about that experience.
Good luck which ever way you go. My kitchen remodel is going painfully slow. Will be posting about the progress later today.
I have been following along on your kitchen remodel. It looks like it is coming along. I like the new arrangement. Too bad about the mouse though. I already own the pasta set for the KA, I just need the press. We don’t eat too many shells so I’m ok with not having that. I do still need my fettuccine maker fixed though. I think the Hardworking Husband is afraid to try to fix it. But what’s the worse he can do? It’s already broken. I have tried to comment on your post but for some reason the comments aren’t showing up. It may be that I’m on an ipad. I will have to try through my desktop.
I think I had the setting wrong to allow comments. Will see if it works now. Had a couple of problems with the work on the remodel which has set us back a couple of weeks time wise. However, I took it as a sign and used the time to order a different sink. I found out last night that they make them in colors, so I ordered a mocha colored sink to go with all the browns. LOL
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