Homemade Pasta

Two simple ingredients elevate a bowl of pasta from great to gourmet: eggs and flour. It's definitely not as easy as opening a box, but if you have the time (and lots of eggs, like I do), you'll experience pasta in a whole new way.

There are a few things that will make the process easier and the end-result better.

Kitchen scale

Stand mixer with pasta-making attachment OR

Manual pasta roller

9 oz. flour (abut 1 1/2 cups), plus more for kneading

6 oz. eggs (about 3)

Place mixing bowl on a kitchen scale and measure eggs. In a separate bowl, measure flour. 

Using dough hook of an electric mixer, mix eggs on low until yolks break. Gradually add flour, scraping the sides of the bowl to push flour into egg mixture. Add more flour if needed to get the dough to begin to form a ball (some will still stick to the sides of the bowl).

If you don't have a mixer, or prefer to do it old school, measure your flour into the mixing bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour and crack eggs in one at a time, incorporating egg into the flour in between each addition.

Turn out your dough onto a floured dough mat or clean counter top. Knead the dough, adding more flour until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. Knead until dough ball is firm and smooth (about 8 to 10 minutes). Cover completely in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10 minutes up to 12 hours. 

Prepare your mixer with the pasta roller attachment or set up your manual pasta roller. Also prepare a baking sheet with two sheets of wax or parchment paper cut to the same size as the baking sheet.

Alternately, you can roll sheets of pasta out with a rolling pin. 

Divide dough into 8 sections, working with one section at a time and keeping the others covered in the plastic wrap.

With each section, stretch the dough into a small rectangular shape (about 1/4 inch thick) and run it through the pasta roller at the thickest setting two times. Adjust to the next thinnest setting, running it through at least twice. Dust the dough with extra flour. At this point the dough should be long enough for you to overlap the ends and use the roller to connect them into a continuous loop. This will make it quicker to continue rolling the dough out thinner.

Continue running dough through the roller a few rotations each time you go to a thinner setting until you've decreased about 5 settings and your loop hangs at least a foot from the roller.

Cut pasta loop and run remaining dough through the roller. Place back on your dough mat and cut it in half, giving you two sheets of raw pasta that are approximately 12 inches long.

Dust both sides of the pasta with flour and place on your parchment-lined baking sheet, overlapping the noodles. Cover with the other piece of parchment paper while you roll out your next section of dough.

Once you have your pasta sheets, you can use them as lasagna noodles or cut them into other shapes. If you have a stand mixer with multiple pasta attachments, you can run them through a spaghetti or linguine attachment. Or, you can use a biscuit cutter or knife to cut pasta into circles or squares for ravioli.

To cook, heat a large pot of salted water. Boil noodles for 3 minutes. Drain and use in your favorite pasta dish.