Making your own pasta can seem intimidating. Why hassle with the time, effort, failure rate and expensive, complicated pasta maker when you can just buy a box of noodles at the grocery store? There is an answer: this Do-It-Yourself homemade pasta recipe is simple, and the resulting taste experience will convince you why making your own beats pasta-in-a-box every time.
You don’t need a pasta machine — you are il pastaio, the pastamaker! All you need is a sharp knife, a scraper/spatula, a rolling pin (to reduce the amount of my tiny-kitchen utensils, I use a wine bottle!), and five minutes to mix up the ingredients on your counter.
Once the dough has rested for 1/2 hour, rolling it out, cutting it and pulling the strips to the right thinness is a cinch. This is a great family project that gets your kids or grand kids involved, or make it on your own and enjoy the tactile, mud-pie-making sensuality of Italian cooking!
Make the dough with semolina flour and you get the larger-grain roughness on the noodle that sauce loves to cling to or use an all-purpose flour and make a creamy, dreamy-smooth noodle. Your choice! Both make delicious, tender pasta results.
Below are two videos I made using semolina flour followed by the recipe. Enjoy!
HOMEMADE PASTA NOODLES
Serves 8
4 cups all-purpose or semolina flour
4 eggs
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
¼ cup warm water, as needed
Measure flour onto your clean kitchen counter and stir salt into the flour. Beat eggs lightly. Add the olive oil to the eggs and mix. Then make a well in the flour on your counter and pour the egg mixture in, folding it into the flour mixture. Add water as needed to make the dough pliable. Knead the dough until it is smooth and firm, approximately 3 minutes. Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and set aside on the counter to rest for 30 minutes.
If you have a pasta machine, you can use this and cut your dough into wide, flat sheets.
If you are using a rolling pin, divide the dough into 4 equal parts and roll out on your floured countertop until the dough is nearly transparent, about 1/8 inch thick. I roll as I go, but you can roll each sheet out then flour the top of each sheet and fold end-over-end and cover with a dry kitchen towel until you are ready to use it.
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