We just ventured into making our own pasta and did a lot of experimenting! After trial and error, here’s the best fresh pasta recipe we found out there! Have you made pasta from scratch? Tips you would like to share? Send us an e-mail or leave a comment above! Enjoy!
Ingredients:
3 Cups Unbleached all-purpose flour (we prefer King Arthur)
5 Extra-large Eggs, Farm Fresh if you can get them
teaspoon Kosher Salt
1 teaspoon Olive Oil
Directions:
Mound the flour in the center of a large wooden cutting board or the center of your countertop.
Make a well in the middle of the flour; sprinkle the salt over the flour.
In a small bowl, lightly whisk your eggs and olive oil together and gently pour into the well (be careful not to let the egg mixture burst through the wall of your well).
Using a fork, begin incorporating the flour starting with the inner rim of the well and working your way out. As you incorporate the eggs, keep pushing the flour up to retain the well shape so the eggs dont escape. If they do, dont worry ? keep on going and it will still come together.
As all the flour gets incorporated, you will have to begin using a kneading action with the palm of your hand as this will become a bit of a difficult mass to work. Parts of the mass will also become dry bits but just keep incorporating them.
Now use both hands to knead the dough, primarily using the palms of your hands. Once the dough is a cohesive mass, remove the dough from the board/countertop and scrape up any leftover dry bits and discard them. Lightly flour the board, if necessary, to prevent sticking and continue kneading for another 5 to 6 minutes.
Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and wrap securely in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. If your’e not planning to work the dough and cut into pasta at this time, you can refrigerate the dough overnight and cut the next day, but not any longer as it will turn dark in color.
Next is the fun part and that’s cutting the pasta! If you have a machine, make certain to use the rolling press, starting with the largest opening and slowing stepping down to the smallest opening. Once fully kneaded by the machine, select the size cutter to use and begin rolling the dough through the cutter.
We found it?s really helpful to have a second person working with you at this point as when your’e cutting the pasta it helps to have someone else holding and pulling it from the cutter as it cuts so as not to have it clump under the machine.
Then, hang to dry on racks or cook fresh. For a drying rack, we just used a rack from our oven turned vertical and hung the pasta over the rack. For the pasta that we were cooking right away, we just laid it out on baking sheets and cookie racks.
The above recipe makes approximately 1 pound of fresh pasta.