Homemade Pasta

So if you have a pasta machine, this is a pretty easy thing to accomplish and it absolutely tastes better than dried pasta from a box. It is definitely more labor intensive than opening a box so if you're not going to have time to do it right, go with the boxed stuff because it's better than poorly made pasta.

Here's a wonderful rule of thumb for pasta making that I learned from Jamie Oliver. For every 100 grams of flour use 1 egg. To make enough pasta for a few people to have reasonably small portions, you could make dough with 100 g of flour and 1 egg. However if you're making a large dish or you just want to make a decent amount of pasta for 4-6 people, I'd double it. Also, if you make too much you can always hang the fresh pasta until it dries and then store it.

100 grams of flour
1 egg
dash salt

Here's the classic way to make pasta. Place the flour in a large mound (if you want to be really authentic, throw the flour mound directly on your counter top but you can certainly do this in a bowl). Make a well in the top and pour in the egg. Carefully whisk up the egg being certain that you don't get the flour everywhere and then once the egg is scrambled, slowly begin incorporating the flour until you have a cohesive dough.

Then, flour a board or your counter and pour out the dough. Now to be quite honest, you have to knead the hell out of this. You will have to knead this for at least 15 minutes by hand (No shortcuts). You'll know when this is done because miraculously, it will be a smooth and elastic dough.

Brush the dough with olive oil and then wrap in plastic wrap for at least a half hour (but I usually do an hour so I have time to clean up and sit for a few minutes).

Then when you're ready to roll this dough out, break it into sections and then re-wrap the remainder until you're ready to use it. Follow the instructions for your pasta machine and remember that when you cook this stuff, it cooks REALLY fast. Like in 2 minutes so watch it.