Homemade Pasta

[ianeccleston]

Faith,

Thanks for joining us here on eGullet!

I've been making homemade pasta at home for a couple of years now - mainly for ravioli, lasagna and tagliatelle (and of course maltagliati, inadvertently or no). In all these cases I always use the pasta machine, and roll it out to the thinnest setting. However, I always wonder if there are cases where people make thicker pasta - fresh pasta with more of a chew.

Marcella Hazan says to roll it out "as thin as you want it", but other cooks usually say to roll it as thin as possible. If people do indeed roll thicker pastas, what are your recommended sizes, cuts and sauces to accompany them?

The alternative, I suppose, is to use semolina flour (with water, no eggs). My attempts at this have been appalling though, from the long kneading to the rubbery, inedible product at the end of it. Which is unfortunate - my father-in-law, whose family is from Calabria, gets misty when he talks about his mother making cavatelli from semolina. I'd love to be able to make something like that for him. Please share your thoughts.

Thanks,

Ian

Edited November 14, 2004 by ianeccleston (log)

[Faith Willinger]

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.

Faith,

Thanks for joining us here on eGullet!

I've been making homemade pasta at home for a couple of years now - mainly for ravioli, lasagna and tagliatelle (and of course maltagliati, inadvertently or no).  In all these cases I always use the pasta machine, and roll it out to the thinnest setting.  However, I always wonder if there are cases where people make thicker pasta - fresh pasta with more of a chew.

Marcella Hazan says to roll it out "as thin as you want it", but other cooks usually say to roll it as thin as possible.  If people do indeed roll thicker pastas, what are your recommended sizes, cuts and sauces to accompany them?

The alternative, I suppose, is to use semolina flour (with water, no eggs).  My attempts at this have been appalling though, from the long kneading to the rubbery, inedible product at the end of it.  Which is unfortunate - my father-in-law, whose family is from Calabria, gets misty when he talks about his mother making cavatelli from semolina.  I'd love to be able to make something like that for him.  Please share your thoughts.

Thanks,

Ian

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[ianeccleston]

Ciao Faith,

Thanks for your advice. Are there any other shapes besides ravioli and tonarelli that I should aim to make thicker?

And also, concerning semolina pasta, is there a technique to make the semolina pasta edible? Other people have recommended using the dough hook on a stand mixer to get the flour and water to a dough-like state, but I would imagine that that might make the dough even tougher.

Thanks,

Ian