Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I'm eyeballing pasta machines. I like pasta well enough, but what has me on the hut for a pasta machine in the not too distant future is cracker style pizza. The dough is laminated on a dough sheeter, but those are both big and expensive. Another forum for pizza enthusiasts had a thread where one person made a pretty good cracker style pizza with his Kitchen Aid mixer and the Kitchen Aid pasta attachment, pasting the sheets together to make the sheeted dough fit the 14 or 15 round cutter pan used for baking this sort of pizza.

My Kitchen Aid has been postponed in favor my wife's education. But a pasta machine is quite do-able. I worry about it being up to the thin sheeting requirements for the laminated dough, maybe 1/4 inch thick finished. Traditionally the dough is quite dry, but the KA maker added a bit of water to make it less problematic.

Any suggestions for a good quality manual pasta machine that is strong enough to handle the job?

I have an Atlas. It's pretty old but works like a charm.

Have you considered rolling by hand? I've done that and I know several people who ONLY roll by hand. Wouldn't cost much to give that a try. Not as hard as you might think.

fitzie

Thanks, I was looking at reviews of the Atlas on Amazon and they were pretty positive. As too hand rolling, this is a pretty dry dough, though they do hydrate it some since a commercial quality sheeter is not involved, but hand rolling is described as being "pretty hard to do". At least according to the guys that seriously chase laminated cracker style pizza.

The Atlas is a very sturdy machine. I've had mine for years and years and have never had any problems with it.

The pasta dough is a little drier than pie dough but I didn't really have any problems with it. The friends I referred to are women in their 80's and they make pasta by hand at least once a week. Surely a young fellow like you could too!

fitize

Yeah, pasta dough maybe, cracker style pizza dough, maybe not. I see the stainless Atlas for sale in the sub $70 range so I'm getting geared up for. We use a bread machine to do the pizza dough now, but I use a higher hydration dough, actually the KA beer dough recipe for our pizza now. No problemo. Cracker dough is different kitten altogether.

I am glad to hear the Atlas is a strong unit. I think that is the way for me to go, at least for the short run. Thanks for the input!