Homemade Pasta

WARNING Pasta is really easy to make; you might actually never want to buy store bought again. Oh, and you might have fun making it.

– 150g of 00 (double zero) Flour, have 1/4 c of flour in a small bowl on the side.

– 50g of Semolina

– 2 Large Eggs

– Small glass of water, you may or may not need it.

The how to:

First: Mix the flour and semolina together in a large bowl or place everything on a nice clean surface, give yourself enough space. Create a well in the middle of the flour mound and crack the two eggs in the center. Use a fork to carefully combine the eggs and flour until you get to the point where you can use your hands. This is the fun part, knead the dough for about 5 minutes. If the dough seems too dry, add a drop, yes a drop of water at a time and continue kneading the dough, just until everything has combined and the dough is smooth. Cover the ball of pasta dough with plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Second: The pasta is now ready to work with. You don’t need a pasta machine but it is helpful. If you have a pasta machine, then here’s what you do. Cut the pasta dough in half and wrap the other half in the plastic so it doesn’t dry out. Flatten the pasta with a rolling pin and place the dough in to the machine at the highest setting first then to the next going down a level and the next and the next…until you get a very thin sheet of pasta. At this stage, you can make any shape your heart desires. So let’s say you don’t have a pasta machine, what do you do? Easy, sort of. This is where your kids come in handy, to do the hard part;) Now this is the really old fashioned way, you and the rolling pin do most of the work. Basically you just continue to roll out the dough until you get it to the right thickness or thinness in this case. The dough can be sticky when working with it so use that extra flour I told you to set aside and flour your work surface and the pasta dough. Make your pasta and set aside until your sauce is done.

The pasta doesn’t take very long to cook, maybe a couple of minutes but ALWAYS salt your water before cooking your pasta. The pasta water should be salty like the sea…remember that.