Fresh pasta at home!

Last year I have tried with some of my very courageous friends to make home-made pasta. Well, the result was a very delicious ravioli dish and aching arms for several days. No need to say that I was a bit hesitant about doing fresh pasta again without a rolling machine. So no more delicious fresh home-made pasta until last week, where I bought (finally!) a pasta-machine on the internet. 

So Saturday I tried my first home-made pasta and I have to say that it was a big success! It’s nothing like dried pasta, I will not dare to say it’s better or compare them but it is different and it is so good! We only tasted it with freshly made pesto for now.

To prepare the dough for pasta, you need to count 100gr of flour and 1 egg per person. I prepared for 3 with 300gr flour and 3 large, free-range eggs. In Italy, pasta can only be prepared with durum wheat flour according to law. Moreover, Durum flour and as a result pasta, as we know it today, has been introduced to Italy by Arabs, during their conquest of Sicily in the ate 7^th century. 

Let’s return to the preparation of pasta dough. First you need to mix the eggs with the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs. I did this in a food processor but you can do it by hand as well. Than you need to knead the dough. Kneading is not the easiest thing but there is no need to dread it either. You have to squash the dough a lit bit, reshape it, pull it, stretch it, etc. You can stop when the dough starts to feel and look smooth and silky. Wrap the dough in a clingfilm and let it rest for half an hour in the fridge. 

The next step is to roll your pasta. Take a piece as big as an apple from your dough. First you need to start with the widest opening of your machine. Roll your dough through it, dust a little bit with flour and go on with the next setting. The trick to obtain smooth and rectangular shaped pasta sheets is to fold the pasta in two at this point and go back to the widest setting again. You should repeat this cycle for 5 to 6 times for even better results. The next thing to do when you are satisfied with your pasta is to go one by one to the smallest settings. I stoped at the 4th one for chunky bites of tagliatelle.

At this point you can stop and shape your pasta either with the machine or with a knife.  I prepared some tagliatelles, as I sais, with the machine and cooked them only for 3 minutes! They were delicious! So a final word for fresh pasta: totally worth the effort!

Bon apétit!