Making pasta yourself is easier than you think

Making pasta yourself is easier than you think. I would have never believed it, had we not tried yesterday. And it tasted absolutely great! You should definitely try it out.

First you have to make the dough. It is very similar to bread dough minus the yeast and less water. You can make it with or without eggs. We chose to make it with eggs. One cup of flour per one egg. Also we added season salt and oregano to the dough right away. The amount of water depends on the size of the eggs. When he dough is too soft it is harder to work with. Then it has to rest for about 30min. It makes the dough smoother and more elastic.

You can definitely see the difference in the dough with and without resting time. So don’t leave it out. And it’s so much easier to work with.

Now it is time to pull out the pasta machine. We have the top Italian brand Mercato. It is really nice and stable and not too expensive. There are lots of extras available, even a motor. But the crank works so easily that a motor is really not necessary.

Next thing you do is roughly roll out the dough and cut it into a few pieces. After that the pieces will be fed through the pasta machine to make them evenly flat before they are cut into the type of pasta you want to make.

If you don’t have a pasta machine, you can still make pasta. But the rolling out has to be much finer and you have to cut the Fettuccine strands by hand. Otherwise let the machine do the work.

As you can see the pieces get nice and evenly flat. Don’t make them too thin if you want to make e.g. fettuccine. But if that happens, just put two pieces together and run it through the machine again (on a wider setting). My final setting was on 4. Dust with flour if needed.

When the pasta dough has the right thickness switch to the cutting attachment piece, run the dough through and voilá there is your Fettuccine.

And it is actually quite surprizing how much that small amount of dough will make. I used 2 cups of flour only and we had pasta for 2 days.

The time to cook the pasta is about 5min. So do get your sauce prepared before you put the pasta into the boiling salt water. You can also just use oil or pesto. I used up my husband’s yummy tomato sauce and added my “secret” quick fix Sauce Bolognese by Gefro to make a bit more. It is honestly the best store bought one you can find (aside from fresh ones in a jar). You buy it in powdered form and just stir it into liquid. It is up to you wether you add meat and veggies or not. But it tastes great without, too.

Now you cook the pasta, then drain it it serve right away with your sauce.

I added Parmesano, of course. 🙂

Making pasta yourself will get you the best pasta ever. I’m really not sure if I will ever use store bought again. And this was only our first try!