Pasta Maker Basics

Pasta is comfort food, whether or not you grew up in an Italian kitchen. Some of my first memories are of eating spaghetti, slurping up the long noodles and licking up the sauce. The ingredients in pasta are so simple, flour, eggs, olive oil and water. How can something so simple taste so good? If you have never made your own pasta at home it is time to treat yourself. Homemade pasta is one of the great marvels of the kitchen. So, roll up your sleeves, gather the kids or grandkids, friends and family and get ready to transform wet and dry ingredients into dough. And from the dough into noodles and from noodles into comfort food.

One simple tool can really make pasta making fun, and that is a pasta machine. There are electric models as well as the more familiar hand crank types, but either version will make delicious pasta and make the process easier. The big advantage a pasta maker has over the hand roll method is that you get a consistent thinness throughout the dough and the dough becomes very stretchy, which is a quality you are looking for. If you are not familiar with pasta makers, some of the name brands to look for are Lello, Imperia and Weston, for electric models, and Atlas, CucinaPro and Imperia for the manual types. If you already have a Kitchenaid mixer, you can buy the Kitchenaid pasta attachment and mix and roll the dough with the same machine. My hand crank Atlas pasta machine has been the favored tool in our kitchen for rolling thin sheets of dough and everybody gets a turn at the crank.

If you are going to mix the dough by hand, start by placing the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into a smaller bowl and beat them lightly to break the yolks. Add the oil and water and mix well before pouring the liquids into the well in the center of the flour. Continue to mix with a fork or a wooden spoon until the dry ingredients are moistened and begin to clump together. Now roll up your sleeves and get ready to get your hands on the dough to finish the mixing.

Lightly dust flour onto your hands, to prevent sticking, and grab one part of the clump. Fold that part onto the center of the dough, press down and out toward the rim of the bowl. Continue to fold and press the dough and rotate the bowl as you do so until the dough no longers sticks to the sides and you have one piece of dough. Turn this out onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for 2 to 3 minutes longer, turning and folding the dough into intself. This activates the gluten in the flour which gives the dough its elastic properties.

The purpose of kneading the dough is to make sure that all the ingredients are fully incorporated together and to get the gluten in the flour to begin its work. If your dough is not coming together, sprinkle it with a little water and continue kneading. If the dough is sticking to your hands or the board, add a little flour by dusting the surface of the dough and the board. The dough is ready to rest when it becomes smooth, soft and pliable. Let it sit on the board at room temperature covered with a clean kitchen towel for about 30 minutes before rolling the dough.

The basic steps in rolling out pasta dough are to run the dough between the rollers of the pasta machine beginning on the thickest setting and gradually rolling the dough on narrower settings. You do not want to roll all the dough at once; there’s just too much of it, so it is easier to cut the dough into quarters and roll one piece at a time. You will end up with 4 or more elongated rectangular sheets of dough, ready to be cut into any shape you want. Some shapes like papardelle, which are strips about 1 1/2 inches wide, can be cut by hand. All pasta makers come with one or more attachments for cutting the dough, the most popular being tagliatelle and tagliolini. Some of the electric models will have an attachment that extrudes the dough to create circular shapes like spaghetti and capellini.

Once shaped the pasta is lightly dusted with flour again, to prevent sticking to itself, and allowed to rest. You can cook the pasta immediately and toss it with your favorite sauce, or you can let it dry. A pasta drying rack keeps the noodles separated as they dry so the noodles won’t end up as a big clump of dough when you try to cook them. You can also freeze the pasta for future use.

Once you have made and eaten a batch or two of your own homemade pasta you will find it hard to go back to eating the commercially made and packaged type. Making pasta at home with friends and family is a joy and creates wonderful memories. It is said that food tastes better, and is better for you, when it is made with love. You can’t get much more comfort than that. Happy pasta making!

Making fresh pasta at home has been a Lauder family event for years. Family, friends and neighbors all take a hand in making the dough and gathering at the table to feast on the results. Watch a video on rolling dough through a pasta machine on Geri’s website, browse great cookbooks and pick out a pasta machine for your next family pasta party.