To make a good homemade pasta, you need good flour, fresh eggs, and a little time. It's so simple and yet yields the most delicious and basic of cooking ingredients.
- flour (Tipo '00', fine semolina or just plain flour if you're out of anything else)
- eggs (1 egg to 100g of flour)
Mix into an almost non sticky ball of dough and knead till smooth. Rest for at least 15 minutes. (make your pasta sauce while waiting). Flatten the dough into a rectangle.
Run it through the pasta machine at it's widest setting, around 4 or 5 times until silky and shiny. Continue to run the pasta dough through the machine at progressively smaller settings
until you get the thickness you want. I usually like setting no. 6 on my Avanti pasta machine.
If using plain semolina, the egg may be eliminated and only water used. The semolina grain is from a hard wheat and can form a dough by itself. However more kneading and resting time is needed to make sure the dough is at the right consistency.
Many shapes can be made. The fusilli below was handcut into strips and then each end rolled in a different direction so as to twist the pasta into a corkscrew shape.
Finally, boil to al dente, add your favourite pasta sauce and enjoy!
