Your Own Pasta

Getting ready to roll & cut pasta

One of the things I stress in my Frugal Food column is do-it-yourselfedness. I find the things you make yourself to be tastier (partly due to freshness, partly due to you customizing to your tastes), healthier (you know what is in the products), and less expensive.

So too with making your own pasta!

What do you need to make pasta? Not too much. The raw ingredients (flour, eggs, oil, salt, water), a pasta board (typically a slab of marble) or a bread machine, and a pasta machine (hand turned or a mechanized one). I am supposing real purists forgo the machine and use some other means to cut the pasta, but I use a pasta machine.

Again, I am not not going to get into the particulars, recipes are plentiful, and the machine you use to cut the pasta come with instructions so you don’t need my guidance there. However, prior to cutting the pasta dust the sheet with all-purpose flour, it makes it less likely your pasta will stick together coming out the machine, especially important if you are making spaghetti or similar pasta.

In the end, don’t worry if it comes out natty looking or like a bird’s nest, you will undoubtedly do better the next time. Practice & persistence, right?

We made some the other night. I had two batches of it already and let me tell you it was very delicious! I made some spaghetti and some noodles, the noodles are going to go into a turkey soup.

January 19th, 2009 in Frugal Food |