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"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." - James Beard


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Saturday, March 7, 2015

Fresh Pasta


On a snowy Saturday I decided to make fresh pasta for the first time. I received a KitchenAid Pasta Attachment set for my KitchenAid mixer as a Christmas gift and decided to give it a try.



First I needed to find a recipe for egg pasta. This recipe from Serious Eats worked beautifully. It includes extra yolks and made a wonderful, tender noodle.

Here's what you need to make the pasta: 


280 grams (about 2 cups) all purpose flour
2 large eggs
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon kosher salt



Pour the flour onto a clean work surface and make a well in the centre.



Pour the eggs, egg yolks and salt into the well and beat them with a fork, slowly incorporating the flour.



Use a bench scraper if you have one to scrape up the dough and combine the flour and eggs.  If you don't have one, use your hands.



Keep mixing in the flour until the dough forms a shaggy ball, about 2-3 minutes.  Knead the dough with the heel of your hand, pushing it away from you, then turning it and pushing again.



It seems like it will never come together, but after about 5 minutes of kneading, you'll have a firm, smooth ball of dough the texture of Play-Doh. 



Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.



After the dough has rested, it's time to roll it and cut it. Attach the roller attachment to your mixer, or use a hand-crank pasta machine if that's what you have. 



Cut the dough into quarters. Work with one quarter at a time and keep the rest wrapped tightly so they don't dry out. 



Roll one of the quarters of dough flat with a rolling pin.



Then set the pasta roller to the widest setting and feed the dough through 3 times.



Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and fold the two ends towards the middle.



Fold in half. 




Feed the dough through the machine another 3 times on the widest setting.




Then adjust the rollers one notch thinner and roll through 3 more times.  Keep repeating, adjusting the rollers thinner each time until you've fed it through on #6.



By this time it will be very long and very thin.



Sprinkle a piece of parchment with flour and lay the pasta on it, sprinkling it with flour and folding it over itself.  Cover it with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap and repeat the whole process with the other three quarters of dough. 



Now you'll have four super long, thin sheets of dough.  Cut them with a knife to the length you want your noodles (I cut mine in thirds).



Now it's time to cut your noodles! If you want wide ribbons of pappardelle, you can cut it with a knife. The attachment pack comes with spaghetti and fettuccine attachments. 
I made fettuccine.



Feed each sheet of pasta through the fettuccine attachment. Wrap each set of noodles into a little nest and place it on a sheet of parchment, covering it with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap as you work.  



Once you're ready to cook the pasta, boil a pot of salted water and place the noodles in the boiling water for just one minute.  Drain and toss with whatever sauce you prefer.  I made an Alfredo sauce I'll tell you about next time. 

This process was somewhat time-consuming, but it was lots of fun. It was so neat seeing the dough come together and then become noodles! And the pasta tasted fantastic. I highly recommend making home-made pasta for special occasions. 


1 comment:

  1. Definitely seems time consuming but you can't beat homemade pasta.

    ReplyDelete