Jessica bought a pasta roller attachment for her KitchenAid! So obviously we both wanted to use it right away. It was great to have two people to feed the dough into the machine and catch it as it came out (and take pictures of the process!) but you can do it alone, too! The machine is doing most of the work.
We used Tyler Florence’s recipe for pasta dough. He uses it to make ravioli, but works just as well for spaghetti and fettuccine. The recipe makes a pound of pasta, so if you want less, half it. Or learn how to dry and preserve it by making a nest. I’m still working on that skill.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Directions:
- In an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the flour and salt.
- Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and continue to mix.
- Drizzle in 1 tablespoons of the olive oil and continue to incorporate all the flour until it forms a ball.
- Sprinkle some flour on work surface, knead and fold the dough until elastic and smooth, this should take about 10 minutes.
- Brush the surface with the remaining olive oil and wrap the dough in plastic wrap; let rest for about 30 minutes to allow the gluten to relax.
Once the dough is well rested, it’s time to turn it into spaghetti:
- Cut the ball of dough in 1/2, cover and reserve the piece you are not immediately using to prevent it from drying out.
- Dust the counter and dough with a little flour. Press the dough into a rectangle and roll it through a pasta machine, 2 or 3 times, at widest setting. Pull and stretch the sheet of dough with the palm of your hand as it emerges from the rollers.
- Reduce the setting and crank the dough through again, 2 or 3 times. Continue tightening until the machine is at the narrowest setting; the dough should be paper-thin, about 1/8-inch thick (you should be able to see your hand through it.).
- Flour the sheet as needed, or let it dry out a bit, before rolling it through the spaghetti setting. This is very important to prevent the strands of spaghetti from sticking back together!
And there you have it. Fresh pasta made with ingredients that you already have in your kitchen. After trying this, you’ll never want to go back to boxed spaghetti.
