Ciao Ian When making egg pasta you should use soft wheat flour, like White Lily, that has lower gluten than all-purpose, a mixture of soft and hard wheat. And you should knead the dough on a wooden board--the porous surface will produce a better dough. Pasta rolled out from soft wheat flour, like Italian 00, should be silky, not leathery, which is what you get with harder wheat. Pasta for ravioli and squared off tonarelli should be slightly thicker than tagliatelle, lasagna, etc, which should be thin enough to see through. If you're going to the bother of making fresh egg pasta, sauce it lightly so you can taste the rich eggy pasta. Extra virgin (or butter) and parmigiano, maybe with the addition of a tender, sauteed vegetable. Or a simple tomato sauce. Semolina flour is higher in gluten, and is used with water--no eggs because the dough has enough protein without it. Semolina flour and water pasta dough isn't rolled flat into a sheet, but is rolled into a snake, cut off into little pieces, formed into shapes one by one, like orecchiette, twisted with a knife against the board or cavatelli, rolled around a knitting needle. These are pasta shapes that I think you need to see someone make to understand. I've seen demos and have practiced although it still takes me a while to make a few portions. The first 200 are the hardest.
