Homemade Pasta

Last night we made homemade pasta for the Pasta and Cheese recipe I posted the other day. Making pasta, while somewhat time consuming (especially when it involves V making a trip to Walgreens to get eggs), is not very difficult once you get the hang of it and is totally worth the time because it tastes so much better than the dried stuff you get at the store.

The first time we tried to make pasta was kind of a disaster. I have a KitchenAid mixer with some of the pasta attachments, so I decided to follow the recipe that's in the little booklet that came with the attachments. It's a pretty simple recipe:
4 eggs
3 1/2 cups flour
1 T water
Salt

All you do is put the ingredients in the mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, and mix until it just comes together. Then you switch to the dough hook, and let the mixer knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Dump it out, and then knead it a few times on the counter, and let rest for 20 min before you start rolling.

Seems simple enough, right? Well, not really. Getting the dough the right consistency is the first obstacle I've faced in trying to make pasta. I don't think I've ever once used only 1 T of water. Last night I used probably a quarter of a cup, maybe more. It really depends a lot on the weather. The first time I made pasta, it was a crumbly mess that just fell apart when I tried to roll it. Now what I do is put everything in the mixer and start mixing with the paddle. Usually there is quite a bit of flour left in the bottom, but I find at this point it's ok to switch to the dough hook. After that, I'll add water slowly until all the flour is just incorporated into the dough, and then follow the recipe again from there, letting the mixer knead the dough for 5 minutes, kneading it a few times by hand, and letting it rest for 20 min.

Once the 20 min is up, we come to the second obstacle: rolling (and cutting) the dough. The key to this step, which also took me a few tries to figure out, is rolling the dough through on the widest setting enough times to get the dough to the right consistency to be able to get it really thin. To do this, you take about 1/4 of the dough, flatten it out into a shape that will just fit through the roller, and run it through. Take the piece of dough, turn it long ways, fold it in thirds (like a letter) and run it through the machine again, feeding the raw edges of the dough into the roller. A lot of recipes say to repeat this process at least 5 times, but that depends on how long you kneaded it before you let it rest, and the weather/humidity/etc. I would guess that 5 times is probably a pretty good estimate, but what I do instead of counting is keep rolling, turning, and folding the dough until the dough feels smooth and silky. Once you've got the right texture, you can start rolling the dough thinner. Run the dough through on the widest setting, and then set your roller down one setting and run it through again. Keep rolling and narrowing until you reach the thickness you need, depending on the shape of pasta you're making.

Once you get to the right thickness, then you're ready to cut and cook! Last night, we made fettuccine using one of the cutters that my sister-in-law so kindly gave me (she ended up with a spare set). It was perfect with the cheese sauce! We had been cutting by hand, which was kind of a pain and left us with pasta that looked like it had been cut by a little kid, so I was very tickled to be eating homemade pasta that looked like the real deal!