Does anyone have a tried & true recipe for making homemade pasta?

Jo-Ann

HOMEMADE PASTA

1 kg flour
2 Tblsp. olive oil
2 whole eggs
600g egg yolks (about 30)

Mix until just coming together (in a mixer or food processor). Wrap well and rest in refrigerator at least 30 minutes (or as long as overnight). Roll out and flour really well. Store in freezer.

Homemade pasta recipes have too much moisture to dry hard and solid enough! That is why home-made is so much better and has much more flavor.

When you do dry it, it becomes fagile and must be handled and stored in air-tight containers with extreme care. If you don't dry it thoroughly enough, any moisture and the egg content can cause spoilage.

I prefer freezing.

I've never made it with Semolina, but I've tried regular flour, bread flour, and 3 parts flour to 1 part resistant starch, and it's worked each time.

I have some other advice:

1. Make a half batch the first time. I've never been able to stack sheets of pasta without having them stick, and it takes up a lot of space to lay them all out by themselves.
2. Don't cut it (leave it as a whole big sheet of pasta) until you've got the water boiling or almost boiling. It sticks even more once it's cut.
3. As you cut it, catch it in your hand so you can keep the strands separated as much as possible, and just lay them out flat on a table or cutting board or whatever. The second you finish cutting the last sheet, get them into the water.
4. It takes about seven seconds to cook. Seriously, though, it's sooo quick.
5. When you move on to filled pasta, don't roll it to the thinnest-- use the second or third thinnest setting
6. If you're not 100% sure the dough is sticking together enough, putting it through the thickest setting a bunch of times, folding it over on itself in between, helps it stick together better. If it shreds or tears, smoosh it back together and put it through again. Once you can get it to come out in a continuous sheet, you're good to go
7. If you make filled pasta and use protein fillings like meat, simmer the pasta rather than boiling it. Boiling makes protein foods rubbery and awful.
8. You don't really have to refrigerate the dough-- you can use it right away if you're in a hurry.
9. For noodles, you only have to knead it until it sticks together. For filled pasta, kneading it properly will develop the gluten more and help keep it from breaking, so it's probably a good idea.
10. Use good eggs. I like to search craigslist for eggs and get them from a chicken farmer. Orange yolks= good pasta.

Happy cooking :-)