How to: Fresh Pasta

Good Morning Ya’ll!

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend and also an awesome New Years Eve and Day! As I mentioned, Mr. Delish and I went to an Italian Dinner for New Years eve and it was amazing. We had such a great time, and the food!

Oh, the food.

It was to die for. We didn’t stop eating for a solid 3 hours and I am not even kidding.

Anyways, I’m going to get right into it because this is probably going to be a longish post as is.

On New Years Day my mom and I decided to break out the pasta maker and get a big batch of fresh pasta made up to freeze. Especially with ravioli, it is SO awesome to make and then freeze. We always lay them out on a sheet pan until they are frozen and then transfer them to a ziplock bag and keep in the freezer until needed. that way they stay separated and you can pull out as many as you need.

Then you stick them in some boiling water and make a sauce and you have a beautiful handmade pasta dish in no time.

I kind of sound like an infomercial right now and for that I apologize. I just really believe in pasta, man.

K so lets get started. This is going to be part one of many, today I will show you how to make the pasta sheets and then over the next week or so I will show you the methods and recipes for lasagne and two types of ravioli, then a couple different sauces to go with those ravioli!

For the dough I actually use the recipe that came with my Kitchenaid Pasta Roller Attachment. There were a few recipes in the booklet and I use the “Basic Egg Pasta” with one minor adjustment. I also included the recipe below. Now this recipe is the same one I always use, whether it be just pasta noodles I am  making, lasagna noodles, ravioli, or whatever. Always the same recipe.

So you can revert back to this page over the next few days as I post the recipes for the different pastas I made.

To begin, you will make your dough as per the recipe below, and this is what it will look like when you take it out of the mixer.

Crazy right, kind of looks like it will never come together. Have faith!

See! It works. This is after kneading for about 3-4 minutes. I didn’t flour the surface before kneading because it is not sticky at all.

Now let it rest on the counter for at least 20 minutes. Once rested, cut it up into 4 pieces.

I made a double batch so ignore that other dough in the background.

Now cover this with a towel so it doesn’t dry out too much. Then take one piece out to roll it at a time, leave the other pieces covered.

Using your hands, flatten the dough into a little disc, you will have to get it thin enough to go through the first size on your pasta roller.

Okay, now with the pasta roller set to level 1 and the mixer on ‘stir’ or speed 1, run the dough disc through the rollers.

What the what is that?

Oh that’s just your funky pasta dough when you run it through the first time or two. It will look weird but don’t get discouraged. Mine looks like that every time. After a couple passes through the machine, it will look a lot better.

Now fold it in half and pass it through again. Keep folding and passing it through on level one until it is smooth and no holes.

Once you have a smooth dough, change the pasta roller to level two. Roll it through, and then fold it in half and roll it through again a few times. Once it is a nice smooth sheet, bump the rollers up to the next level. I stop at level 4 for Lasagne noodles and level 5 for Ravioli.

Now you will need a large surface to lay out your pasta sheets! We used a clean sheet over our dining room table, it was perfect because the noodles didn’t stick to the table and we were able to just throw the sheet in the wash after. Easy clean up is always a plus!

Pretty, pretty, pasta.

And you’re done! For now anyways. Tomorrow I will show you how to make a kick ass lasagne with these babies!

Miss Delish asks:

Have you ever made fresh pasta?

What is your favorite pasta to make?