pasta dough

Author Notes

Read the entire bit through first and then proceed. If you are making your own sauce you should make your own pasta. Easy, like falling off a bike. I prefer semolina flour; however, some mix it with unbleached all-purpose flour depending on the weather. Total of 3 or 4 cups of flour. You could use all whole eggs, or mostly egg yoke, or just egg yoke depending on what kind of pasta you want to make. Use a pinch of salt.

Make a flour mountain. Make a hole in the volcano. Then, break an egg into it. Take a fork and beat in the flour from the middle and go around the edges. Do not break the circle. Use your hand and push flower around if you do as you go. Crack eggs as you go and when you have a dough that is to much to mix with a fork you are ready to go. Start kneading it with your hands adding flour if need be to the table top you are kneading over. When it is a good mass and substantial then wrap it in plastic wrap for twenty or thirty minutes.

Now, go make your sauce. When that is going well the twenty or thirty should be up. Then, roll out your dough out thin. You know this. You could actually get a machine with hand crank and crank out spaghetti by rolling it and thin putting it through the machine until you get the desired thickness. If you have no machine make ravioli. Roll it out in a rectangle about half the thickness of the ravioli you want. It will get thicker. Cut a line to make two equal sheets. You could measure out your squares now if you wanted but do not cut yet. You could eyeball it. On one half place some good cheese like ricotta so that each cheese will become your ricotta centers for the ravioli. Allow at least a half inch edge around each side of the cheese to bind the ravioli together. Take the time and do it right. Seal edges with egg white in a bowl that you will brush on. Put the top of the ravioli on. Cut the squares with a knife or better yet a fluted pastry wheel. I am lazy. I make big ravioli. I was raised on a farm.

You can use a dab of extra-virgin olive oil while kneading the dough as well. May help. Don't forget bit of salt.

You must have good boiling water. When you put in home made pasta it only needs to cook 30 seconds to a minute as it is not dry. You should gently stir it. Test with a few pieces. If you bite into the piece and look closely and still see white uncooked you are on your way. If you see no white dot you went to far. It will take experimenting. When the pasta is done Greatness does not come like Athena from the head of Zeus. It takes time and diligence.
—mr.ikslopot