As I had some spare time in my semester break, I finally tried my hand at homemade pasta. Since this was going to be my first attempt I searched for an easy recipe which would not need a pasta machine or any other special device.
I am very surprised how easy pasta making can be! Homemade Pasta tastes different than packaged one and has also a different texture, I like it better and you should definitely try it out! One chilled Sunday afternoon is enough time to prepare some great homemade pasta you can enjoy for your dinner before the next stressful week starts.
What you need:
❧ 255g of flour
❧ a pinch of salt
❧ 2 Eggs
❧ 6 Egg yolks
❧ 1 tbsp of Olive Oil
What to do:
Mix flour and salt and place it on your workspace. Form a wide enough bowl with the flour to hold all the eggs in the middle.
Whisk together the eggs, eggyolks and olive oil.
Pour the mixture into the flour bowl. Start mixing in the flour bit by bit.
After almost all of the flour is worked in and the dough is forming, take your hands and start kneading for ~10 mins straight. Knead rather a bit longer than to short.
The dough should come back when you poke it.
After you kneaded the dough long enough, flatten it a bit and wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for about 1 hour.
Now divide the dough 8 pieces to work easier with it and start rolling the dough. Spread some flour on your workspace, the rolling pin and every once in a while on the dough.
To get a more rectangular shaped piece, roll the dough out a bit, fold one third to the middle and the other one above it. It should look like this. Now turn the dough upright like in the picture and start rolling it as thin as you can!
There’s an old Italian saying, that says “The dough has to be so thin, that you can read a love letter through it”.
Lightly flour both sides of the dough and then start folding the dough. Fold the outer halves to the middle and repeat this step two more times as shown in the picture.
Now cut this “package” into stripes and roll the stripe out again. Flour the noodles lightly and cook them as soon as possible. Fresh pasta needs less time, after 2-3 mins the pasta should already be done.
You can obviously try out other shapes too. I made half of the dough into Pappardelle and the other half into Farfalle (Bow-tie pasta). For that roll out the dough like before and cut it lengthwise in half. then cut the halves into small rectangular pieces and pinch them together in the middle. It’s pretty easy and after a few pinches you will get the hang of it.
Its better to either store them on a plate or something or boil them right away parallel to rolling the next batch as they stick to each other pretty easy. I put them in a bowl and had a hard time separating them again and even had to knead and roll some of them out again.
Done! Now you have some great, yummy homemade pasta! Enjoy them with any sauce you want or store them for 1-2 days in the fridge.
I enjoyed my Farfalle with aglio e olio, with toasted garlic and olive oil and cut some fresh tomatoes to add a light freshness and acidity to the dish.
And I cooked the Pappadelle with spinach and marinated shrimp.
