After epicly failing on the bread… I decided I had to redeem myself. So I decided to put my new KitchenAid (with pasta roller attachment!) to work and make some pasta. On a whim, I also secured myself the cookbook “Pasta Sfoglia” by Ron and Colleen Suhanosky with Susan Simon after reading about it in one of the food blogs I constant. I’m strange about cookbooks… I love having them, but I hardly ever use them. I usually find recipes on the internet as I am a complete slave to reading reviews of the recipe to determine if I’ll like it, what I should change, and how it’s ranked. Yes, I love crowd sourcing.
This book, however, is already pretty sticky with bits of butter and dough that have escaped out of my bowl (happens often) and onto the pages. My first attempt was surprisingly easy and left me wondering why I thought pasta making was so terrifying and complicated. It couldn’t have been easier!
I made the fresh egg pasta from the book (full recipe below) and then I wrapped it in plastic and stuck it in the fridge for about an hour. It seemed to have a perfect consistency when I took it out (pliable without being sticky).
Though I noticed by the time I put the 3rd dough patty in, it had warmed up to a bit stickier than I wanted (so I added some more flour and prayed… though it did require more reworking than the first 2).
The tip in the book for making pappardelle was to put 3 sheets on top of each other with flour between them and lightly roll…
…Then cut into wide noodles.
Then unroll and presto! Perfect thick noodles (I used a pizza cutter and it worked perfectly).
They were excellent all cooked up (though I did wish for more flavor… I’ll have to explore upping the salt and try with some other types of flour, especially some healthier whole grain options).
I put some more of my new favorite homemade grape tomato sauce on top and MMM was it good!
I still can’t believe I made this all from scratch. This is one of those days that I look back to how far I’ve come (I hermetically sealed a pot while making Rice-A-Roni for the first time in college).
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RECIPES
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Fresh Egg Pasta
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 eggs
- 2 tsp. EVOO
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
- Rice flour for dusting (I just used regular flour)
Directions:
- Add the all-purpose flour, eggs, extra virgin olive oil, and salt to the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Pulse several times until the dough resembles medium crumbs. (I actually don’t have a food processor so I just gave it a few pulses in the mixer)
- Turn out the dough onto a clean, dry, rice flour-dusted work surface. Gather the dough together and knead it until it comes together and is smooth and elastic. Cover the dough with a kitchen towel or plastic film and let rest at least 10 minutes or up to 2 hours. (if wrapped tightly, dough can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days or frozen for 2 weeks and then defrosted in the fridge. The book notes that the dough will discolor slightly but the flavor will be fine.)
- Rolling the pasta (pappardelle, tagliatelle, and fettuccine):
- Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces and flatten each into a disk. Dust with flour.
- Set roller to setting 1. Feed the disks through, one at a time, and fold the dough to meet in the middle and press down to seal between each pass. Put the open side of the dough back through the rollers for a total of 3 times on setting 1. Fold dough so both ends meet in the center and press down.
- Adjust to setting 2. Feed the open side of the dough through the roller twice.
- Adjust to setting 3 and feed through the roller twice. Since the roll will be long, cut it in half. Feed through on setting 3 one more time.
- Dust each sheet with flour and stack. You can now cut it as I outlined above.
- I have cooked my pasta immediately each time, so I can’t advise on storing it (yet). Google!
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