Want To Get Great Tasting Pasta At Home Simply and Easily?

Pasta is comfort food, whether or not you grew up in an Italian kitchen. Some of my first memories are of eating spaghetti, slurping up the long noodles and licking up the sauce. The ingredients in pasta are so simple, flour, eggs, olive oil and water. How can something so simple taste so good? If you have never made your own pasta at home it is time to treat yourself. Homemade pasta is one of the great marvels of the kitchen. So, roll up your sleeves, gather the kids or grandkids, friends and family and get ready to transform wet and dry ingredients into dough. And from the dough into noodles and from noodles into comfort food.

The key to making great pasta is to get the dough to the right consistency and then rolling it to an even thickness before cutting it into various shapes. Some cooks prefer to roll the dough out by hand using a rolling pin and a smooth surface, like a wooden cutting board or a marble slab. I recommend the use of a pasta machine to achieve expert results consistently. With so many different types of machines on the market to choose from, the only decision you'll have to make is manual versus an electric model. Good manual hand cranked machines should be heavy and have a base that clamps to the table or surface you are working on. Atlas, Imperia and CucinaPro are quality names for manual machines. Weston, Lello and Imperia all make electric pasta machines, and Kitchenaid does double duty by offering an attachment to its standard mixer. Although I have the Kitchenaid pasta attachment, I prefer to use my hand crank Atlas pasta machine, because it always seems like more fun to have one person turn the crank while someone else catches the dough.

You can choose to mix your dough by hand or by using an electric mixer of some type. Either method produces a soft, silky dough. If you are making dough by hand, place your flour in a bowl large enough to give you room to mix all ingredients together and make a well in the center of the flour. In another bowl, crack your eggs and beat them slightly, adding the oil and water, and mix well. Pour the liquid mixture into the well in the flour and mix with a fork until the flour is moistened and begins to clump together. Now the fun begins as you start playing with the dough.

Dust your hands with flour and begin to gather the clumps and begin kneading the dough right in the bowl. Grab the mass over onto itself, pushing and turning and folding the dough until it no longer sticks to the side of the bowl. Once you have one cohesive clump of dough, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, a large wooden cutting board works great, and continue to knead for 2 to 3 minutes.

You are done kneading when the dough is soft throughout, you can't feel any lumps, the surface has a sheen to it and it feels and looks smooth. If the dough seems too sticky add a little flour, a little at a time, while you are kneading. If the dough seems too dry or hard, sprinkle a little water on the dough and continue to knead it until it becomes soft and pliable. When you have finished kneading the dough, give it a rest by letting it sit on the board covered with a clean, soft kitchen towel for about 30 minutes. This will relax and soften the dough so it will be easier to roll out.

Divide your dough into quarters and work with one piece of dough at a time. The general idea is to start rolling the dough through the thickest setting on your pasta machine, gradually decreasing the setting to roll a thin sheet of pasta. If you are making raviolis you will place the filling on one sheet of pasta, cover it with a second sheet and then use a pastry wheel to cut between the ravioli squares. All pasta maker machines come with some attachments for cutting the pasta into other shapes like tagliatelle and tagliolini. Some of the electric ones will also provide an extruding attachment for making rounded shapes like spaghetti and capellini. You can even cut the sheets by hand into strips that are 1 1/2 inches wide, like papardelle.

After you have cut and shaped your pasta, the pasta needs to dry out a bit before it is cooked. Dry the pasta at room temperature on a lightly floured board or baking sheet. The flour helps keep the pieces of pasta from sticking to each other and helps seal the noodle. If you have made more pasta than you need for the meal you can freeze it on a baking sheet and then put the frozen pasta into freezer bags or containers for future use. If you just had a ravioli making party, you will be able to enjoy homemade raviolis any time. Pasta also dries well, although you will still want to cook it us within a couple of days because your dough does not have preservatives in it. Long pasta shapes can be dried in little nests or you can use a pasta drying rack, which allows you to dry the pasta as long threads.

Once you have made and eaten a batch or two of your own homemade pasta you will find it hard to go back to eating the commercially made and packaged type. Making pasta at home with friends and family is a joy and creates wonderful memories. It is said that food tastes better, and is better for you, when it is made with love. You can't get much more comfort than that. Happy pasta making!

Making fresh pasta at home has been a Lauder family event for years. Family, friends and neighbors all play a role in making the dough and gathering at the table to savor the results. Watch a video on rolling dough through a pasta machine on Geri's website, browse great cookbooks and select a pasta machine for your next family pasta party.