Saturday, August 06, 2005

Making Pasta - Part I

Dee and I made recently made homemade pasta. We used up a Five Pound Bag of Flour which made a boatload of Plain and Spinach pasta. I thought since we were making quite of bit, it was a good time to snap some pictures.
The top picture shows just about 4 cups of sifted flour. I usually just sift it right onto the cutting board. I started with 4 cups since this was a batch of spinach pasta.
In the middle picture I made a well in the flour and cracked 4 eggs and a added a pinch of salt. It's at this step that you can just use all egg yolks and a tablespoon or two of water. You'll get a much richer pasta. You can also use 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks. You get the idea. Next, with a fork I start beating the eggs but being careful not to break the flour ring as the egg will come pouring out.
I then start adding the spinach puree and continue beating the egg mixture. Additionally I start taking on more flour from about the rim an keep going until it gets too think for the fork. I then switch to my hands and finish until the dough is formed. It is needed for about 5 minutes and it should continue to take on more flour the more you kneed. It is then either put under a bowl or wrapped up in plastic and let to rest for at least 30 minutes.
I will make all my dough first. This particular day we made two batches each of plain and spinach. And that pretty much concludes the first part! This last picture shows all tools that we used!
On television, Mary Ann Espisito from Ciao Italia! as well as Lidia are always doing something interesting with homemade pasta dough! They are my teachers. Making homemade pasta is fun and we have such a good time, especially if a bottle of wine is involved!

No comments: