The Soaring Pig: Making Pasta At Home

by Stephen Dafoe

Making fresh pasta at home is easy to do, and not overly time-consuming.

There are a couple of recipes I use for the dough. The one in the video is the quicker of the two.

Ingredients (Video version)

1.33 cup Type 00 Flour
.5 CUP Semolina Flour
4 Eggs (Whites and Yolks)

Ingredients (alternate recipe)

12 Egg Yolks
1/3 cup Semolina
1.75 cups Type 00 Flour

About the Flour

The key to good homemade pasta is a mix of semolina flour and Type 00 flour (also known as pizza flour). Both are available at Sobeys and No Frills in Morinville.

Semolina is a course and purified flour made from durum wheat. It is typically used in pasta as well as couscous.

Type 00 flour refers to the Italian system of grading flour and tells you it is the finest grain. It also has lower gluten than others, making it a good choice for pizza and pasta.

Starting the Dough

It’s really as easy as mixing your flour, adding in your eggs and working it all into a dough.

You can do this on a flat surface or a large plate or bowl.

Kneading the Dough

Once your dough forms, transfer it to a floured surface. Flour up your hands and start kneading.

The method you want to use is to push out the dough with the palm of the hand, stretching it and mixing it as you go.

Pasta dough has an elasticity to it, so you want to work the dough well until it has that pull back effect.

If the dough is too dry, add a little bit of water. I keep a shot glass of water nearby for that purpose. Just a little drop or two goes a long way.

Letting the Dough Rest

Once the dough is kneaded, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour or leave on the counter under a towel.

The dough can be made one day and cut and cooked the next. You can even freeze it, but you should let it rest before doing so and flour it when you are defrosting it.

Rolling Out the Dough

The elasticity of the pasta dough will allow you to roll it quite thin and move it around like a sheet of fabric without it tearing.

Roll out the dough in all directions, flip and repeat.

As you do so, the dough will get thinner and thinner to the point that you can blow it and it will flutter.

Cutting the Pasta

Once you have the dough rolled out, you can cut it with a pizza cutter or pasta cutting wheel into strips for noodles, sheets for lasagna, or rectangles that can be pinched into farfalle (bowtie pasta).

A future Soaring Pig column will talk about making different shapes with pasta dough.

Cooking the Pasta

Fresh pasta cooks much quicker than store-bought pasta and has a heartier taste. You’ll also eat less because homemade pasta is more filling.

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