Tagliatelle Fatta in Casa

Many people used to be intimidated by the mere thought of making fresh pasta, but with the advent of food processors, stand mixers and hand rolling machines - not to mention the pasta attachments and specialty machines for this purpose - the practice has become almost ubiquitous among home cooks. I've been making pasta dough since I was about 19 years old. My grandmother used to make it almost every day, along with fresh bread, but when she died her cooking skills in this arena died with her. I was basically self taught, but when I went to school in Bologna, I learned how to make pasta again from several of the little old ladies in my neighborhood, including my green grocer's wife around the corner from where I lived. Of course, everything was word of mouth and I would bring my latest success (or disaster) for approval and critique and with time, I got better and better. Mind you, as a student, this was well before thy day of owning a mixing machine of any kind so everything had to be done by hand, including rolling out the dough.

Tagliatelle Fatte in Casa

I know I've mentioned before that I have a vast number of cookbooks, but I want to mention that I have also tried recipes for pasta in the cookbooks of Marcella and Giuliano Hazan, Giuliano Bugialli, Lorenza dei Medici, and Lidia Bastianich and I just want to say that everyone has a basic recipe which is pretty much the same. However, we all tend to customize according to our own environment. This holds especially true when comparing how things taste and feel in Italy to other places around the world; just think about how espresso tastes there and here and you'll know exactly what I mean. Everything in Italy is about the environment (la terra) - and it is pretty much the same with pasta and everything else. It's about the flour, the eggs, the milk, the olive oil, any and all of the above.

I normally make pasta with a food processor and then crank the dough out on a hand rolling machine. For this particular recipe, I used my KitchenAid stand mixer with a dough hook and it really worked very well. No matter which manner you make the pasta dough, there is still a fair amount of, but not too much, kneading by hand required to make the dough elastic according to your own hands.

This recipe makes about 2-1/2 pounds of pasta

3 cups "00" flour

4 eggs

4 egg yolks

1 tsp. olive oil

Place all ingredients into the large metal bowl of your mixer (or into your food processor) and mix with the dough hook until the dough falls away from the sides of the bowl and forms a mass  (about 4-5 minutes). Place on a floured work surface and knead by hand for a few more minutes. Put in a large ceramic bowl and cover with a damp tea towel and let rest for at least 30 minutes. 

Prepare your pasta rolling machine securely onto your work surface (a wooden countertop is ideal) with the attached vise. When ready to roll the dough, take the dough and cut a piece with a pastry blade and flatten into a large disc. Set the roller at no. 1 and begin cranking the dough through the cylinders. Fold the dough and repeat the process several times until the dough becomes elastic but hardened like a piece of leather. Turn the cylinder setting to no. 2 and continue rolling in exactly the same way as you did with no. 1. I usually repeat the process several times with no. 2 before progressing to the third setting. Continue in this fashion, constantly pulling the dough from the long end to stretch the dough as it is rolled out, until you have a very long sheet (sfoglia) of pasta. I stop at the 8th setting. The dough should be very long in length,  the color of light straw and almost see through. At this point, you can cut it in half and let it dry temporarily on a floured surface or on a dry tea towel.* I usually let the pasta sheet dry for about 20-30 minutes before using the noodle attachment to make tagliatelle or taglionini (very narrow noodles). The drier the sheets, the better the noodles will be to make into nests.** If the dough is too "wet", the nests with stick together into a gloppy mass and then won't cook properly when placed into the boiling water. I always use at least a 2 gallons of water per pound of pasta when making noodles. Always put in a handful of Kosher salt into boiling water just before cooking the pasta. Fresh pasta cooks much faster than boxed or dried (about 4 minutes - tops). 

* If you are making lasagna, manicotti, or tortelli or ravioli you can let them dry a bit and then cut the sheets into smaller rectangles for this purpose. Layering the pasta sheets on towels will ensure that they won't dry too quickly. Fresh sheets curl up when drying so the weight of the towel will keep them flat. 

** I have found that nests dry better if they dry from below as well as from above. I therefore, have a special window screen that I use exclusively for this purpose. I put a towel on top of the screen and lay the nests on the towel and let them dry for about an hour or two. Turn them over periodically to ensure that they dry evenly. If you aren't going to use all of the noodles, you can refrigerate the noodles in a Ziploc bag and then freeze them.