There are three ways of making pasta shapes. You can extrude the dough through shaped holes, cutting the forms off as needed. You can roll the dough thin, then hand cut the dough to be shaped. The same can be done using a “pasta machine” which rules the dough to a known thickness. Or you can use cutters to cut sheets of pasta.
I’ve been making pasta dough for a couple of years. I stepped up my game recently by deciding to roll my dough instead of squeezing it in the pasta machine.
Since I was going to roll out the dough, I decided to get rid of my mixing bowl and do it on my board with the well method.
This is a step forward. One of the lessons I’m still learning is how small a batch can be made this way. If the batch is not large enough, there isn’t enough floor on the board to create a well with deep enough walls.
I was lucky, there were only two eggs in play, so the eggs didn’t go everywhere, just a slight panic.
Which brings us back to dough. Normal pasta dough is an egg and floor mixture. My recipe is 3/4 of flour to 1 large egg. Occasionally, it is two eggs plus a yolk. It really depends on how the dough feels.
Today, the dough was too wet. I should have added more flour, but I didn’t.
The eggs are mixed into the flour until it comes together. At that point, I switch to kneading. I knead for 10 minutes, by the clock. The sad thing is that I always check the time remaining at 2:30. I don’t know how I get there, but I do.
This egg pasta works well for rolling out or squeezing. This was turned into rigatoni.
I didn’t know I could make this by hand, I thought I would need to use an extruder for rigatoni. I am happy with my results.
It does not look like machine made pasta. The dough was a little wet. I also had some issues cutting it. Next time I will use the bicycle cutter to get nice squares.
Ally took the other half of the egg pasta and made beautiful bow tie pasta.
The other type of pasta dough is made with water and semolina flour. Bluntly? I just guessed at the amount of warm water to add. It came out nearly perfect.
This pasta dough doesn’t roll out as flat as the egg pasta, but it is used for other pasta shapes. We started with Orecchiette. Those were easy to make, but I didn’t like them. Ally loved making them, so I let her do it.
This is made by cutting a 1/2 diameter rope of dough into 1/2 long chunks. Then you roll the under your thumb.
Malloreddus is made the same way, but the pasta is pressed on a grooved board to make a wonderful pattern. This was my favorite shape to make. They go fast, they look nice, and they have a good bite to them. Plus they hold the sauce.
The Busiate was another fun shape. It uses a 1/4 in rope of dough cut into 3 inch long sections. These are twisted around a skewer and the rolled flat.
I think they look delightful, I want to practice them some more.
I’m hoping that Ally will do an article about the sauce she made for our homemade pasta. I will say it is the best I’ve had in years.
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