Pasta from Scratch

Submitted by Late Night Gourmet

"I make this pasta with semolina to increase the stability. The finished product is still velvety smooth."

 

• Ready In: 50mins
• Ingredients: 5
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• 2 1⁄2 cups flour, 00 grade Italian
• 1⁄2 cup semolina
• 5 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon salt

directions

1. Using a blender equipped with dough hooks, mix the flour, semolina, and salt together. Add eggs one at a time, breaking the yolks in the bowl as you do. Add olive oil. Blend until dough starts to pull away from the sides.
2. Knead dough and whatever dry components remain together by hand until fully combined. Roll into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
3. Start boiling a large pot of water and keep at boiling temperature.
4. Cut dough into 4 pieces, then wrap 3 of the pieces in the plastic wrap to keep them from drying out. Cut that portion in half, and form into a rectangle. Roll out as flat as possible using a rolling pin.
5. Using a pasta roller that's been dusted with flour, roll out the pasta into long sheets. Roll through at least 3 times, starting with the widest setting and gradually making it smaller. Add flour to pasta and pasta roller as needed to prevent sticking.
6. Form pasta into the desired shape. Ideally, use a pasta drying rack to hang the pasta (see photo for example). By the time you fill all the racks with pasta, the first rack will be dry enough to start cooking. If you don't have a pasta drying rack, lay pasta out on a baking sheet so the strands don't have a chance to stick together.
7. NOTE: do not add salt to the water! The pasta contains enough salt already. Add pasta to the water one rack at a time. Give the pasta a swirl with the tongs to make sure it doesn't stick together while cooking. If not using a pasta rack, just make sure not to crowd the pot.
8. Cook for about 90 seconds, and extract pasta using tongs. NOTE: this technique is used to keep hot water in the pot, as opposed to the dry box method of pouring the pasta into a colander.
9. Place pasta on a strainer to drip off excess water. The prefect time to remove the pasta from the strainer is when the next batch of pasta is done cooking.
10. Repeat steps 4-9 until all the pasta is cooked.