Pasta Making Adventure

So this semester, I'm going to attempt to be a little bit better and do a bit more cooking of real food other then making small snacks here and there.  So last night I came home from school and decided that I would want to make some pasta for dinner that night.  So off to the Planet Organic (Local organic foods store) to grab some semolina flour to make the pasta.

Recipie
100 Grams Semolina Flour
200 Grams All Purpose Flour
3 Eggs
1 Tbsp olive oil
Pinch of Salt

First you mix the two types of flour and then mound it.  Beat the eggs and add a pinch of salt as well as the olive oil.  After mixing well pour into the mound, and start mixing into flour with fork.  After you have mixed a bit and the egg solution starts being a bit more solid.  Slowly mix the rest of the flour into the dough.  It's alright if some of the flour stays on the top of the dough.  Now if the dough seems a bit dry, add a bit more egg, and if it's too wet add a bit more flour.  After you're done mixing the flour, roll dough into a ball and let it rest for one and a half hours.  Now here's an interesting point that I learned last night, the reason why you let it sit (and why you let bread rise before you crush it back down) is to allow the gluten to form and let the dough get more stretchy.

After you're done all of that, here is the fun part of pasta making.  Cut your ball of dough into 4 or 5 pieces.  After take a single piece and feed it through the pasta making machine on the lowest setting.

Pasta Making Machine

Then you fold the piece into thirds and feed the wider portion back through machine twice.  Up the setting by one, roll it twice.  Keep on increasing the thinness, stopping on the second highest setting if you're doing angel hair or tagliatelle.  If you're making lasagna or ravioli, roll it onto the highest setting.  After you're done rolling, you can cut it thin or thick depending on what you want.

General Notes
You want to make sure that you keep your dough covered because you don't want it to dry out.  Another thing is that you want to make sure if you lay pieces on top of each other while rolling them out to make sure they're well floured.  Same thing as when you're cutting the strands, because if you don't keep them floured they will stick together, and you will have a clump of pasta which is not fun.

After cutting just kinda curl them into small balls by looping it over itself and stacking it. 

Cook and Enjoy.

Pasta is a great way to carbo load before events, that and it tastes a lot better when it's homemade.  So head on down to your local store, you can probably pick up a cheap machine for about 30 bucks and make pasta to your hearts content