Fresh Pasta

I think this may be my biggest food related leap of all time.

I'm so excited to make my own pasta though. I bought a hand crank pasta roller at Williams Sonoma this week. It was my 6 months with my boyfriend on Monday so we thought we'd do some dinner on Friday night for it. I'm planning to make a spicy peanut satay sauce on spaghetti type noodles with large shrimp. More on that later! But I thought what could be better than making the pasta myself too?! So I'm going to try it. And if I decide after a few times I really hate it, I'll just use my roller to make perogies. Or upgrade to the kitchenaid attachment. (It was alot more expensive for a noob like myself).

I'll post some pictures of the (what I assume will be) event of making my pasta. As well as all the normal stuff, what I'd change (hopefully nothing, there's 3 ingredients), if I liked it and if I'll manage to do it again. I plan on making it tonight so that if I screw up majorly I won't be as sad about it tomorrow. Here goes.

Step 1

Flour and Eggs and a splash of oil. I used about half and half semolina and unbleached all purpose.

Step 2

Mix with hands until dough forms. This was no where as easy as it looked. Which I should have assumed. I had to add some more liquid. I added some water and oil. Nothing was working. I added another egg. And then some more AP flour. Finally, dough.

You have to let the dough sit at least 30 minutes. Mine was definitely still not elastic enough after that. I let it sit about another hour. 90 minutes total in a sealed plastic bag.

Step 3

Cut the dough ball/lump in half. Roll through the press several times on the largest setting. I did this about 5 times. Folding it over and rotating it each time. From here I went thinner. My Pasta roller has 6 settings. I went from 0 - 4. 0 being the thickest, 4 as thin as I went for my Spaghetti noodles.

Step 4

After it was thin enough I put it through the spaghetti attachment that's included. Then Spaghetti happened!

I'm not at taste yet. I laid it out to dry for a couple minutes, sprinkled it with some extra semolina flour and put it in a large ziplock in the fridge. I hope its amazing. It took too long to not be. I'm sure after you do it a few times it gets easier to figure it out and you find a good recipe. But I can't wait to try it.

Here's the link to the recipe I used and then manipulated to my needs. I think it may have a lot to do with the dryness in Calgary that I had to add so much extra liquid.

Fresh Pasta