Homemade Pasta – Yes You Can!

Homemade pasta, it’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s tasty, did I mention it’s cheap? I had found several recipes on line for homemade egg noodles, I had a pasta roller that I had purchased many years ago, I had the ingredients I needed, so why not give it a try?

The process is pretty simple, take flour, eggs, salt and water, mix them up to make a stiff dough, cut it into manageable pieces, run it through the pasta roller until it is smooth and thin, then run it through the cutter in the size you want. If you want to see a more detail, click on the image, it will open in a new window.

Well, it’s doesn’t work the way you see on TV, one of the things that most recipes and cookbooks don’t tell you is when you first start rolling the dough in the pasta roller, it will look like you made the biggest mistake and you’ll think you should throw away that dough and start over. The dough will break, crack and generally look wrong, well it’s suppose to look like that, what you have to do it fold the dough back on itself and keep running it though the roller (on the widest setting) over and over again. Yes, it is messy, get over it and have fun! :)

Re-rolling the dough conditions it, kneads and smooths it. Eventually it will start looking right, it will smooth out and look like a proper dough. Once you can run it through the roller on the widest setting 6-10 times, and it looks smooth, then you start changing the setting on the rollers, you tighten rollers, one step at a time, then you run the dough though the rollers, but now you don’t fold the dough, you just keep running it through, changing the roller setting one step tighter on each roll.

The dough will get longer and longer, if it get’s too long to handle, then just cut the dough into a more manageable length. Keep running it through the roller until you finally get it on the thinnest setting. Keep the dough strip flat as possible, try not to let it bunch up beneath the pasta roller, it may stick together, if it does, don’t worry, just squish the dough together and start over. You can lightly dust the dough strip with flour if it is sticking to your hands or the table.

Once you get the dough strip to the thickness (or thinness) you want, then run the dough strip through the cutter, I have been using the thicker strips, there is another cutter that would make spaghetti noodles. As you cut the noodles, you need to make sure you dust the noodles with flour, not too much, you use your fingers to “fluff” the pasta up to cover the noodles equally with a light dusting of flour. This will keep the noodles from sticking together.

At this point, you have 3 choices, you can use it fresh, my personal favorite. You can dry the pasta for later use. Or you can freeze the noodles. If you cook it fresh, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the noodles, stirring as you go to prevent sticking, bring it back to a boil (it shouldn’t take too long), cook it for 3 minutes and no more. If you cook it after it’s dry or frozen, then you will need to add more time, I’d say 7-10 minutes, check it after 7 minutes, do not over cook it, it will become mush.

The noodles you make yourself will have a superior flavor to anything you can buy in the store. It doesn’t take that much time to do either. You can use these noodles in any recipe where you would use store bought pasta. Bob likes it just plain with a bit of butter and salt. Whether you eat it plain or add a savory sauce, once you try homemade pasta, you will not go back to store bought pasta!

Recipe, you can easily double or triple this recipe

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 egg
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3-4 Tablespoons water

Mix everything together, it’s easiest if you have a food processor or a bread machine, let them do the mixing for you, otherwise, mix everything in a bowl, it will be a stiff dough. The flour will take up different amounts of liquid depending on the humidity, the eggs will be slightly different sizes, so this isn’t an exact recipe, you may need to adjust the recipe, but it’s pretty simple. If the dough is too soft, add more flour, if it is too stiff, add more water, go easy on anything you add, add in small increments, mix again and see how it looks. The dough should not be sticky.

Cut the dough into manageable pieces, one recipe I would cut into 2 pieces, double recipe I would cut into 3 pieces. Set the other pieces in a bowl with a towel over it to keep it from drying out.

Work the dough in the pasta roller on the widest setting, fold the dough over and run back through the pasta roller, do this as many times as it takes for the dough to look smooth and not crack or break.

Now tighten the roller one step, put the dough through the roller, this time do not fold the dough, tighten the roller one more step, put the dough through the roller, do this until you reach the tightest setting. If the dough gets too long, just cut it in to more manageable pieces. LIGHTLY dust the dough with flour if the dough becomes sticky.

Once you reach the desired thickness, run the dough through the cutter to make the type of pasta you want. Be sure to dust the pasta with flour and fluff the pasta with your fingers to distribute the flour, now either cook it fresh (3-4 minutes in salted boiling water), freeze or dry.

You can also do other things with your dough, you can make ravioli, spaghetti, lasagna, most any pasta shape you can do with your homemade pasta.