Cookaholics Bulletin Board

My daughter is interested in making her own pasta. Recently they borrowed a friend's KA attachment for their first try and the results were less than stellar. Granted, it was a last-minute, hurried process.
What are your recommendations for pasta-making for the novice? Recipes? Processes? Hints and advice? Any help will be much appreciated.
Thanks everyone!

Cookie,

I have had the best luck with CI's pasta recipe which you make in the food processor. I do it with 00 flour though from the Italian market (makes for a less chewy pasta in my experience). After resting the dough, dust each section with flour, run it through the largest setting a few times doing an envelope fold each time (flouring as needed to prevent sticking) until the dough becomes silky and elastic, and then you are good to go to roll it thin. Roll it thinner than you think as it will expand in water (iirc, I tend to use setting 6 for pasta, and 7 for filled shapes). For long strands I do nests sprinkled with flour. They store easily in the fridge for make-ahead cooking, and freeze well too.

The right kind of flour is really key for pasta making - if you don't have 00 flour available (our Whole Foods market has it) you can order it from King Arthur's.

Thanks for these tips. What about a pasta attachment? They have a KA...are they decent? Or would a manual roller be better? We don't know anything about pasta-making at all, so any help on the mechanics would also be really appreciated.

I taught myself late last year. I use 50% 00 flour and 50% semolina (3/4C of mix + whole egg per serving). I make the dough in my food processor and roll it either by hand or with my KA attachment. I liked hand rolling but I had a lot of waste when I wanted to make something like lasagna or ravoli, and the nice straight noodles that came out of the attachment was very much easier.

I also got a book at the library that I liked well enough to go buy:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Artisan-Pa ... isan+pasta

--Lisa

Emilie and other folks on the board helped me get the confidence to try it and it turned out great the first time. Using Emilie's suggestions, I did it on the food processor. I used 1 cup semolina, 3/4 cup ap, 2 x-large eggs, 1 TBS. each olive oil and water and salt. After dough is made in the fp, I let it rest for in the fridge for several hours, then on the counter for 15 minutes before rolling. That seemed to really help make it easy to roll and cut. You can cut the dough different ways. I divided mine into 4 parts and then made sure the sheets were a little less wide than the roller. Flour well, keep dough not it use covered so it does not dry. Make sure pieces don't tough each other. I did 6 cycles for each piece and then 1 cycle at each of the other settings until you reach the one you want. I did 7 for fettuccine. Let the sheet rest again and then ran them through the cutting blades. Nested them (floured) and then let those rest again for 30 minutes.

I have the KA metal roller and blades attachments, not the plastic ones. Good luck.

I prefer the KA rollers to a manual machine, but that may be related to the struggle I had finding a clamp that would securely clamp the manual machine to my island top. The one included with the machine did not work very well. Alton Brown once clamped his to an ironing board, but I got vetoed on my attempt to try that.

In its most basic form, pasta requires only eggs and flour. I still make more pasta with the store brand AP flour in my pantry than with "00" or Durham wheat flour and it is OK for learning if Italian ingredients are not readily available.

Fine Cooking has a pretty good video on handling pasta sheets during rolling. Keeping the pasta floured lightly on every pass and finding a way to work without overwhelming amounts of pasta laying around the kitchen are critical and may be as important as the recipe used.

My weight based recipe is 95 grams of flour to each 50 grams [1 large] of egg. If the eggs come up light, I add water to make up the difference. If they come up heavy, I add a few additional grams of flour.

I love my KA pasta roller kit. I traded my Atlas in for it, and have not turned back.

I'm new to making pasta, but I also love the KA pasta rollers.

These articles reminded me that we used to make pasta long before we had a machine. It was fun, informative, and a great way to start one's pasta making journey.

How to Make Handmade Pasta Without a Machine

How to Make Handmade Shaped Pasta