Pasta Dough (Or, Pasta machines are the suck.)

It is with some trepidation that I write this post, because I’ve been 3-for-3 so far with the bread, pie dough, and biscuits. Things have been rolling along so smoothly, that I thought I could get through this book with a perfect record. The unattainable could happen, right?

Ha.

I knew this day would come, that one of these ratios wouldn’t work well for me. To be fair, the dough itself wasn’t the problem, it was when it came time to cut the dough with the pasta machine. So technically, I’m still batting 1.000, but I’m afraid I’ll have to put an asterisk by my record, kind of like Barry Bonds with his single season and lifetime home run records. (But that’s another topic to be discussed over a case of beer. It will take that much to get my full opinions out.)

Homemade pasta is one of those foods that home cooks have typically left to good Italian restaurants, and with good reason. The making of the dough isn’t the hard part; it’s the rolling, cutting, and drying that is where the work is. I had made homemade pasta a long time ago, and one of the things I remember is having flour everywhere. It’s like going to the beach and trying to get rid of the sand. A week later, you’re still finding sand in places you wouldn’t think you’d be finding it. I’m that way with flour. You could dance a mean jig on my kitchen floor when I was done. Then, you’re supposed to drape the pasta over rods to let it dry, and you end up hanging pasta over your dog because you’ve run out of room.

This time around, it was a slight change for the better, but only slightly.

The ratio is simple enough: 3 parts flour to 2 parts egg, by weight. Since large chicken eggs, are two ounces, the simpler ratio is 3 ounces by weight of flour per egg, and one egg per serving. Very simple. Only two ingredients. It’s really hard to screw this up, right? Well…

Old Italian ladies will tell you to make a well in the flour, add the eggs, and mix it together with your fingers. You know why people tell you to use a wet hand and dry hand when dredging stuff in flour and egg? If you don’t, you will end up with club hand. You will end up with the exact same thing here as well. No offense to you ladies, but I’m mixing it in a bowl with a fork. Works well, keeps your fingers clean, and the sides of the well don’t fall apart with egg running everywhere. Then I formed it into a ball, and commenced kneading. So far so good.

Time to knead. I did this one by hand, because the amount is small enough, and it is quite therapeutic. This dough has enough elasticity and is dry enough to make kneading fun. After about 10 minutes of kneading, I was left with a satiny smooth ball of dough and a lovely patina of flour and egg on my counter.  A swipe with a bench scraper (which everyone should have) quickly removed it. Wrap it in plastic, and let it sit for an hour.

Next up is the rolling process. I invested in a pasta machine for this. To my dismay, when I tried to attach it to the counter, the machine wouldn’t stay attached because the lip on my counters is too shallow to allow for the clamp to fully tighten down. Fortunately, Alton Brown devised a brilliant way to attach a pasta machine to an ironing board. I thought, what the hell? Let’s give it a shot. He drilled holes though his, but I didn’t want to have to buy another ironing board. My solution was to buy the cheapest ironing board cover I could find ($5), and put that over my existing cover. Next time, I’ll remember to put a single layer of a trash bag down first to keep my existing cover clean. A small block of wood put in the clamp itself took up some extra space, and my pasta machine is now firmly attached to the ironing board. Now I have a long narrow working area for pasta, and let me tell you, it worked PERFECTLY.  It’s beautiful in a ingenious-ghetto kind of way.

Now, we roll. So far, so good. Starting on setting 1. I rolled, folded, and rolled again. Then I went to setting 2, 3, and all the way to 6.

Then it was time to cut, and here’s where things went to shit. First, I tried the spaghetti setting, and ended up with dough that was pinched, but not cut into separate strands. I ended up with something that looked like linguini with an indentation down the middle. Lame. Very lame. Looking back at the manual, it said the dough may be too wet. So I added some flour, and tried again. Same thing. Frustrated, I took all the strands, added more flour, and kneaded some more. Now, when I tried to run the dough through the roller, I thought I was going to break the handle; the dough was so tough it would barely roll through. Well crap. After enough coaxing, I finally got the dough to roll correctly, but this was quickly becoming more trouble than I wanted. I tried cutting again, and had better success this time around, with only a few of the strands failing to cut. I then laid the dough out on a sheet pan, and dusted the pasta with flour to keep it from sticking. After much profanity, this is what I ended up with.

Not bad, and the fettuccini actually cut better than the spaghetti. Bonus.

Now that we have this pasta, what to do with it? Well, I had a plethora of basil around, so I whipped up a batch of basil pesto. I boiled a pot of water, dropped the pasta in for about 5 minutes, drained it well, and added the pasta.

Oh. My. God. (Yeah, sorry about no picture.  I was so hungry I forgot to get one.)

This was heavenly. Nothing at all like dried pasta. The dough was much softer, almost dumpling-like. It had that rich eggy taste that fresh pasta should have. The pesto didn’t overpower the pasta, since pasta is typically just a carrier for a flavorful sauce. Here, the pasta actually shines through, with the pesto being a complement to the pasta. The wife loved it, saying it was quite possibly the best pasta she’s ever had.

So, is it worth it? Yes, it is, but with a small reservation. As long as you’re willing to cut the pasta by hand, all should be well. Next time, I’m going to cut the pasta by hand so I don’t have to mess with those stupid cutters. This would be perfect for tagliatelle, linguine, or pasta sheets for lasagna or ravioli.

Ingredients:

King Arthur all-purpose flour
Large eggs from HEB

Next up is cookies. That cookie monster dude is stalking me.