Chicken Librarian Makes: Pasta!
Basic Pasta Dough
recipe found here
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup water
Instructions:
Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Stir salt and flour together and then make a well in the center of the flour. Crack both eggs into the center along with the water. Using a fork, start mixing the flour, eggs, and water until all are incorporated. Your dough should be slightly sticky. If it’s too dry, add some warm tap water until you get the correct consistency.
Once the dough comes together, take it out of the bowl, place on a floured cutting board, and start kneading. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Then place dough in plastic wrap for at least 30 minutes but no more than 4 hours, at room temperature (you can refrigerate until ready to use if not using within 4 hours).
Now you’re ready to roll it out and shape it into whatever shape you’d like. I’ll walk you through a couple different options, including the one I did above. I use my pasta roller attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer, but you can certainly use a rolling pin to roll it out. I’m giving instructions on how to use the pasta attachment.
Cut your pasta into quarters, leave one out on the cutting board, place the others back in the plastic wrap until ready to use. Attach your roller to your mixer if using this method. Set the dial to “1”. Turn machine on. Lightly flour both sides of your dough to prevent it from sticking to the rollers. Slowly feed the dough through the rollers at each level, twice. So, for example, run the dough through level 1 two times, then turn the dial to “2” until desired thickness is obtained.
Once you have your sheet of pasta rolled out, now comes the fun part! Decide what shape you want to cut it into. You can use the pasta attachment to make different shapes (I have the attachments for spaghetti). Or you can make different shapes with tools you have right in your kitchen. You can cut the rolled dough into squares and make ravioli, farfalle, or even tortellini. You can cut the rolled dough into long strips of various widths and make tagliatelle, fettucini, pappardelle.
You repeat this process for each of the dough quarters above. Then you can eat it fresh or you can dry it. To dry it, just lay it out on cooling racks until dry. If you are making a long noodle shaped pasta, just hang it to dry. You can make your own drying rack or use whatever you have. You could use cookie sheets or the cooling rack. It should take anywhere from 12-24 hours for it to dry. You’ll know it’s dry when it snaps when broken. Then you can store it at room temperature in an airtight container.
So there you have it! It’s that easy. The hardest part is deciding on which shape to do! AND then deciding on your sauce!
P.S. Here are a couple of books that I just love that deal with everything pasta:
The first book is a great overall resource. It gets into the technical details of pasta, flours, and everything in between. The second book is great for fun flavored pastas. It will make an appearance again in our Chicken Librarian Makes line-up, count on it!
It's that easy friends! So. Grab a good pasta dough recipe and get to rolling. HEHE.
'til next time
-k
xoxo