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Handmade Pasta

Welcome back! 
Today, we have a recipe for the staple Italian dish: Handmade Pasta! This recipe will set up you with some delicious pasta noodles that you can then use to make literally any pasta dish, like a Carbonara or a Pesto pasta. This is a basic technique to master if you want the delicious satisfaction of eating fresh pasta at home, and it's really not too hard, especially if you have machines to help with the kneading and pressing of the pasta. However, if you're willing to put in a little bit of elbow grease, you can make this whole thing just by hand!

Handmade Pasta

A Cacio e Pepe that we made with handmade noodles

Makes about 4 servings

Ingredients:

  • 200 grams 00 (doppio zero) flour (plus more to dust)
  • 60 grams semolina flour
  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions:

  1. Pour the flour and salt onto your workspace. Make a large well for the eggs in the middle.
  2. Carefully incorporate the egg into the flour until it starts to clump up.
  3. Knead the dough until smooth and slightly bouncy.
  4. Let rest for at least 30 minutes.
  5. Flatten the dough out into a long, thin sheet. You may want to split the dough into smaller chunks.

  6. Once at the desired thickness, dust both sides with flour and fold the sheets of dough up. Don't skimp on the flour or it will stick when you cut it.
  7. Cut the folded dough into the desired width.
  8. Cook the pasta in a boiling pot of salted water until al dente, for 2-5 minutes depending on the thickness of the noodles.
  9. Serve however you like!
    Served with some homemade pesto
The 00 flour is traditionally used in fresh pasta like this and helps to give the pasta the softer texture that fresh pasta has. Different recipes have varying proportions of 00 flour to semolina flour, with some using just 00 flour to some using a 1 to 1 ratio (though this is on the tougher side). We opted for a softer ratio of about 3 to 1, and it was a good balance. As for the variation in the cooking time, this highly depends on how thick the pasta is; we flattened the dough by hand so it ended up being fairly thick and needed 5 minutes to cook, but if you pressed the dough with a machine (or just put more effort in flattening the dough), a more typical sized pasta noodle would take just 2-3 minutes to cook. Any way you do it, you should just check periodically and see if the noodles are cooked the way you like, but keep a watchful eye because these cook much faster than dry pasta!

-Chefpo
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