Many have asked me about making pasta at home and most think I have some fancy equipment to make it at home. They are truly surprised when they see what I use. So, tools of the trade:
a fork
a rolling pin
a pizza cutter (or a razor blade!)
and a coat hanger.
Ingredients:
– 2C all purpose dough
– 2C Durum ’00’ flour (look for semolina pasta flour. I buy Hogs Mills brand and it is pretty close to the Italian stuff without breaking my bank)
– 1C ground flaxseed, at room temperature
– 1/2t salt
– 2T olive oil
Method:
Mix the dough and salt together. Pile it in a heap on a clean countertop. Make a depression in the flour and break all the eggs in it and add the oil to it. Using a fork, break the yolk and mix the eggs together and slowly incorporate the surrounding flour. Ultimately, you should have finished almost all of the flour (except maybe 1/4 cup) till it becomes impossible to stir the fork. At this point, start using your hands and knead it till it is of soft consistency. Start to roll the dough and make long sheets using a pulling action with your other hand to activate the gluten. The final result should look like this:
At this point, divide up the dough into as many pieces as you’d like, dust all the pieces with the remaining dough and freeze. Take one portion and roll it out as above and using the pizza cutter (or razor blade), cut thin strips, separate the strips and hang them on a coat hanger as below:
It usually takes about 10 minutes for the pasta to harden. You really do not have to wait till it completely hardens. When you are ready, dump 2T of salt into boiling water and break the pasta into the water as shown. Keep in mind that unlike store-bough pasta, this will be done in less than 5 minutes!
