Want to make a delicious home cooked meal that will blow your sock off? Well, I must say that homemade pasta will certainly impress your dinner guests and light up your taste buds.
You will never need to eat that bland dried pasta again after you have eaten fresh homemade pasta. This recipe is so simple, that you will be amazed with the result.
So lets learn how to make this very simple meal from scratch. This recipe makes enough pasta dough to feed four people when cooked.
Homemade Pasta Dough
Ingredients
Firstly you will need some pasta flour 00. This mid protein flour is especially made for pasta and is available in most supermarkets or bulk stores. You will also need five fresh eggs (preferably from your own backyard chickens), a little olive oil, and a pinch of salt.
Method
Measure out 250 gm (8.8 oz) of pasta flour into a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the bottom of the flour and crack in three whole eggs and two egg yolks. The two egg yolks increase the richness of the pasta.
With a fork, mix the eggs tip yolk and white are combined, then with clean hands, mix the flour into the eggs to form a dough. When roughly mixed, add a splash of olive oil (about one teaspoon), and the pinch of salt.
Continue to mix the dough until it is totally combined and elastic. If you think it is a too moist, then add a little more flour and need until it is not so sticky.
Once you’ve made your dough you need to knead and work it with your hands to develop the gluten in the flour. Otherwise your pasta will be flabby and soft when you cook it, instead of springy and al dente.
Once kneaded, transfer to a bowl, cover, and allow to rest in the fridge for at least an hour but two is better. This helps when rolling out the dough.
Once rested, roll the dough on a well floured surface with a rolling pin, or run it through a pasta machine at #1 a few times to make the dough pliable. Then you can roll the dough to the required thickness to make your pasta. A good tip is that you can dust a bench top with ordinary plain flour instead of using the more expensive 00 flour. It saves you a bit of money in the long run.
Variations
To save a bit of money, you can vary the dough by using 250 gm of plain flour ’00’, 250 gm continental flour or semolina, 5 whole eggs and mix initially with a fork and then your hands until it forms a firm dough. This way you get a larger batch of dough, for less cost.
Add a splash of colour
To add some colour to your dough, you can also sauté a little spinach or silver beet leaves (no stem) in a teaspoon of oil, and when cool blend it into a paste and add a tablespoon to the dough mixture to give it a green colour. You may need to add a little more flour to compensate for the moisture in the spinach.
Uses for your dough
At this stage, you can just about make any type of pasta you like.
What I am going to do over the next couple of days is show you two great ways to use your pasta dough.
We are going to make Fresh Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli, and then I am going to show you how to make Fettuccine with a simple tomato based pasta sauce. Both are very delicious variations using this very simple to make, homemade pasta dough.
Addendum; As a follow up to this post, you could try my home made Ravioli, or home-made Fettuccine, or even my home-made Spaghetti.
Who loves to make their own pasta? Do you use a different method with a successful outcome?
A breadmaker is also great to make pasta dough. You can also you white bread flour (or wholemeal) if you can’t get hold of 00 flour. Been doing that for a long while now, and you’re right Gav, the home made stuff is heaps better than most of the shop bought stuff.
Cheers
Nice tip Mick. The flour has really got to have a fair bit of protein in it. Bakers flour is a perfect substitute for ’00’ flour. However the normal homebrand plain flour should be avoided at all costs. It makes very ordinary pasta dough.
As one who is now intolerant of gluten, I miss pasta, desperately. GF pasta’s aren’t as good in my opinion and of course nothing comes close to homemade. I have a recipe for homemade buckwheat pasta to try but in the meantime I shall live vicariously through you.
Oh, and beetroot for pink pasta and turmeric (just a tiny dash) for a deeper yellow. 🙂
I am sure buckwheat flour would work as I have seen it for sale. And thanks for the colouring tips for the different shades! Red can also be achieve by adding a little bit of tomato paste.
Thank you Thank you Thank you Gav. I all ears & eyes. My son gave me a pasta machine several years ago and i haven’t taken it out of the box. Im afraid to fail – though who would know? Now i dont have to. Im going to be following every step to the letter so no mistakes or short cuts.
No, thank you Lynda. Watch out for tonight’s post about Ravioli! Nice and easy.
Like mocinoz, I use my bread flour – unbleached bakers flour – the same one I use for my sourdough. No doubt the 00 flour would be better, but my little country town supermarket doesn’t have 00 flour, and the bakers flour is high gluten and works fine (and it’s cheap). I also don’t use a pasta machine – I just roll it out with a rolling pin on the benchtop. If you were making pasta for a lot of people this would be laborious, but for up to about 4 serves it’s so easy it’s hardly worth getting a pasta machine out, and fast and easy enough that there isn’t any temptation to use dried commercial pasta. Homemade pasta is one of those miracle recipes that once you have it sussed, you can turn out a real dinner party feast with just eggs, flour, and a few things from the garden.
Love your comment Linda. Great tips, and I concur. Basic homegrown ingredients makes delicious wholesome food, which is definitely a crowd pleaser.