Making pasta at home is easy! Here’s a basic recipe that will make enough pasta for six.
I just love making homemade pasta! It is so delicious, and everyone in the family loves pasta night. It’s one of our favorite comfort foods, and we do pasta for Sunday Supper often.
The Equipment!
There are a couple things that will make your life easier. If you have a good stand mixer, that is helpful, but not essential, for making the dough. The more essential piece of equipment, however, is a pasta maker. I have the Marcato Atlas with a motor attachment. The Kitchen Aid pasta attachment is a more affordable option. I have not used the Kitchen Aid attachment, and I don’t own it, but my understanding is that it works great.
When I decided I wanted to learn how to make pasta a few years ago, I asked for the machine for Christmas. I knew I did not want to crank by hand, and if I had a hand crank pasta maker (like my mom has), I would probably never make pasta. The motor is a life changer.
The Dough!
Homemade pasta is so easy to make, and so much tastier than store bought pasta! Here’s the full recipe.
Start by measuring out the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. If you have a stand mixer, use the dough hook. Add the egg and olive oil, and mix until it is starting to come together into a dough.
Knead the dough until it is smooth and holding its shape, about eight minutes. Then, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter for at least 30 minutes. This relaxes the gluten.
The Rolling!
When you are ready to roll the dough, set up your pasta station. I have a drying rack, but you can also lay the pasta out on a piece of parchment or wax paper. I put a silicone pastry mat down under the drying rack, for easy clean up. My kitchen counter tops do not give me enough space to attach the pasta maker, so I use a big wooden cutting board, with a no slip mat under it.
When you are all set up, unwrap the dough, and cut off a thick piece. I use about an inch wide piece. Form the piece into a rectangle with your hands. Then, feed it through the pasta machine at its first setting. For my Marcato, that is zero.
After you run it through one time, fold the top and bottom edges to meet in the middle, and square off the ends. Then, feed it through again.
Keep feeding the pasta through the machine, changing the thickness setting in between each roll. My favorite thickness is at 6 on my Marcato machine.
The Cutting!
Once the pasta is rolled to your desired thickness (I roll to a six on my machine most of the time), it’s time to cut it into pasta. The machine came with an attachment for fettuccine and tagliolini. I also have the linguini and spaghetti attachments, and the ravioli attachment.
Tips: If you use the spaghetti attachment, make sure you coat the rolled pasta in flour, or it can stick and gum up the cutting blades. I learned this lesson the hard way! I have had zero success with the ravioli attachment. You cannot use the motor with it (it’s hand crank time!), and you have to set the dough up just right. I have found it easier to just make the ravioli by hand.
Use a pasta wand to catch the noodles as they are cut. The wand makes it easy to move the finished noodles to the drying rack.
Let the pasta hang on the drying rack until you are ready to cook it. If you wish to store the pasta for later, make sure you coat it well with flour, so it doesn’t stick together. You can store it up to two days in the refrigerator, or freeze it in a freezer ziplock.
Homemade Pasta
Equipment
- 1 Pasta maker
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 3 large eggs
- 1 T. olive oil
- 1/2 t. salt
Instructions
- Put flour into a bowl or the mixing bowl of a stand mixer.
- (Optional) If you want to add fresh herbs, add them now.
- Add eggs, salt, and olive oil to bowl.
- Mix until dough starts to form a ball.
- Move to countertop or board, and knead for about five to eight minutes. A Kitchen Aid can do some of this work for you, but it's also easy to do by hand.
- Form dough into an oval, and wrap in plastic wrap. Set on counter until ready to roll, at least 30 minutes.
- When ready to roll pasta, use a knife to cut off a slab, form it into a rectangle, and roll through pasta maker until desired thickness. My pasta maker starts at zero, and I roll to seven.
[…] First up in making spaghetti and meatballs is the pasta. I just love making pasta from scratch! You can see a whole post on that process on my pasta page. […]