Granini's Homemade Pasta

Granini's Homemade Pasta

Recipe

3 eggs

2 cups of flour (divided into two sections - 1 1/2 cups and 1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

1. On a clean surface, pour 1 1/2 cups of flour into a mound.  Make a hole in the middle.
2. Break your eggs into the hole.  Add olive oil and salt.
3. Using a fork, gently and slowly whisk your eggs, slowly adding in a wee bit of flour, just a little bit at a time.  
4. As more flour is added to your eggs, you will need to start using your fingers and hands to mold your dough into a lump.  Add in the final 1/2 cup of flour, a little at a time, as needed to form a nice dough ball.
5. Knead your dough.  The dough will be stiff and tough in the beginning.  If your dough is too sticky, add just a wee bit more flour.  If it is too dry, sprinkle / spritz your dough with a teeeeeeny tiny bit of water.  
6. Knead your dough.
7. Keep kneading your dough.
8. Knead it some more.
9. Knead the dough for a good 8 to 10 minutes.  It will seem like forever.  But, like with your baguette dough, it will be worth it in the end.
10. Wrap your dough in saran wrap and leave it alone for at LEAST 1/2 an hour.  I like to leave it for a couple hours or so.  Room temperature is fine.  I usually use this time to go and make my bread dough for rolls to go with dinner.  Mmmmm.  Carbs.  Carbs are tasty.
11. Split your dough into four sections.  Roll each section out into a small rectangle about 1/4 of an inch thick.
12. Run your dough through your pasta machine.  I roll mine out until I get to the number 4.  Then I cut it in half, and roll until I get to the number 7.  I don't like overly long pasta.
13. Lay each section out onto parchment paper while rolling the rest of your dough out.
14. Run the dough through the cutting part of the pasta machine, cutting to the desired thickness.  If you don't want to run the dough through the cutting part of the pasta machine, you can lightly flour your pasta, flip it over into thirds (so that it piles on top of itself), then run a pizza cutter through it, and it cuts it quickly and efficiently!
15. Hang your pasta out to dry on a drying rack.
16. Boil the pasta in lightly salted water for 3 minutes.  Seems like no time at all, but that's all it takes!
17. Drain your pasta (but do NOT rinse it!).
18. Bathe your pasta in your favorite sauce.
19. Serve while hot, fresh, and yummers!!

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For those of you who like pictures, here you go!

Make a well in your flour.  Add in eggs, salt and olive oil.

Use a fork and pile the flour on top of the eggs, and mix that puppy all together.

It's amazing how fast it all turns into a ball!  But if for some reason your dough is too dry and you have way too much flour left over, simply get your hands lightly damp, and keep kneading the dough.  No need to add water to the dough itself.  You just need a spritzer worth -- I just wet my hands, and it works great!  Then knead it for a good five minutes.  Once you're done kneading, wrap it in saran and put it on the counter.

THEN LEAVE IT ALONE.

Put it in time out.

Don't touch it.

Seriously.

LEAVE IT ALONE.

I like to abandon my pasta dough for an hour.  But if you're in a mad rush, 15 minutes will suffice.  But seriously, if you can wait an hour, that's best.

Unwrap, and then separate into four pieces.  I know, I know, you're thinking, "but the pieces are so small!  How on EARTH will this be enough?"

It is surprising how much pasta this wee little bit of dough will make.

When I make the dough and cut it into fettuccini strips, it's enough to feed 7 or 8 fairly hungry people.  When I make it into lasagna sized strips, it's enough to make one VERY large lasagna with double or triple layers of pasta.  I like a lot of pasta in my lasagna.  For a normal person, you could probably get away with two full large lasagnas.  But like I said, I like my lasagna to have lotso pasto.

Okay, back to your dough ball.  Once you have a quarter of the dough, you can sort of shape it into a squarish type cube.  Then lightly flour a piece of parchment paper or waxed paper, and roll it out, longwise, into a rectangle about 1/4 of an inch thick.

That's about right.  Maybe a bit too thick. But it's just about right.

Repeat the rolling out of the dough until all four of your pasta bundles are rectangles.  The one in the back right is horrible, shaped like a triangle, and that ended up making funky shaped pasta.  Don't do that.  Make them like the bottom right one.  It's just peachy.

THEN, you get to do the fun part!  Roll out the dough with your pasta machine!

Start at zero.  Run the dough through.  Switch to 1 and roll it through.  Repeat until you get to level 7.

This is a picture of the dough after it's been run through level 4.

I lay my pasta out onto waxed paper or parchment paper when it's all rolled out and ready to be cut.

Then you repeat the process, using your pasta cutting machine to cut your pasta.

OR, you can cut your pasta yourself.

See pictures below.

I lightly floured my dough, folded it over itself, and cut it with the pizza cutter instead of the cutting part of the pasta machine.  Worked out pretty well!

After cutting it with the pizza cutter.

Then all you need to do is unfold the pasta and hang it up on your pasta drying rack!

oooh! So pretty!  All my pasta, hanging in a row.

Pretty, pretty pasta, about to be my dinner.  Yummmmmm!

It tastes ever so yummy with my homemade tomato sauce.  I made mine from all my garden tomatoes.  Here's a recipe if you're interested.  GranNini's Tomato Sauce.

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