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fresh Pasta

Fresh Pasta Dough

Fresh pasta is one of the greatest joys of Italian cooking. Made with both all-purpose and bread flours. This dough is easy to work with and very delicious in your favorite pasta recipes.
Course Pasta
Cuisine Italian
Keyword doughnuts, easy pasta dish, eggs, Italian food
Prep Time 45 minutes
Total Time 45 minutes
Servings 1 pound

Ingredients

  • 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour
  • 1 ½ cups bread flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 5 large eggs

Instructions

  1. On a clean work surface or a large bowl make a large mound of the flours.
  2. Make a deep well in the mounded flour and crack the eggs into the well.
  3. Sprinkle the salt over the eggs.
  4. Using a fork beat the eggs until well beaten. Slowly incorporate into the flour in ever-increasing circles. Eventually, you will get a fairly stiff dough. Don't worry if you can't get every bit of flour incorporated, it will come together when you knead it. (If using a bowl, dump out the dough and any remaining bits of flour onto the clean work surface.)
  5. Knead the dough on the work surface for several minutes until you get a smooth ball of dough, somewhere in the 5-minute area. You may have to work at it to get it to the smooth stage. The dough will be much stiffer than bread dough, and it doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, but it will have come together nicely.
  6. Flatten the dough out to form a disk and wrap with plastic wrap.
  7. Let sit for 30 minutes to an hour.
  8. To roll out by hand
  9. On a clean floured surface, roll the dough into a rectangle sheet as thin as possible. One way to get it so thin is to roll the dough up onto your rolling pin and rocking it back and forth to roll out several layers at once. Make sure there is enough flour on the sheet of pasta to keep the layers from sticking together. It will take some muscle, but don't fret it. It will get so thin you can almost see your hand through it.
  10. When the pasta sheet is thin enough, flour the sheet on both sides with enough flour to keep the sheet from sticking together as you roll it up.
  11. Roll the pasta sheet up into a long tight cylinder.
  12. Using a sharp knife slice thin or thick slices depending on if you want thick or thin noodles. Unroll the slices and keep in small mounds of cut pasta coated in flour until ready to cook.
  13. To use a pasta machine.
  14. Set up your pasta machine or pasta machine attachment for a mixer on a clean work surface large enough to spread out the rolled sheets of pasta. Or have a large work surface nearby such as a table.
  15. Set your pasta machine (both powered and manual) to the lowest setting, usually #1.
  16. Flatten the disk of pasta dough as much as you can by hand into a longish oval less than the rollers' width.
  17. Pass the dough through the rollers catching the rolled sheet with your hand on the other side. Double up the dough lengthwise and pass through the rollers again.
  18. Repeat several times until the dough becomes smooth, with the edges being the width of the rollers, usually 2 to 3 more times. You can, at any point, fold the dough in half crosswise to achieve smoother edges and just continue to roll until the dough rolls out to the right width.
  19. Change the roller settings to #2. Send the dough through the rollers, doubling up the dough lengthwise each time. You will need to only send the dough through #2 a couple of times.
  20. Continue to setting #3. Again roll twice.
  21. Set the rollers to #4 and roll out once or twice if you need to get the dough's edges less ragged. At this point, the dough can be cut in lengths for lasagna or filled pasta. It can be rolled thinner or cut at this thickness by passing through the cutter attachments for other pasta.