Homemade Egg Pasta

I didn’t grow up in a family that made their own pasta. I’ll be honest, that I didn’t even think about homemade pasta until I lived in Europe in my twenties. An Italian exchange student named Monica at Bereleigh Estate, where I worked as a nanny taught me to make seriously good pasta from scratch. I never forgot her, her lesson (mostly in Italian, lots of miming and broken English) or the appreciation I had for fresh pasta after that but fast forward four kids and a farm, and well, I have had to become a tad bit more efficient.

Enter the Kitchenaid Mixer Pasta Attachment.

I’ve had mine for 15 years and it has never failed. Approximately $175 at the time, they now weigh in at $229.00. This is one of those of those purchases you are better off NOT counting up how much money you are going to save making your own.

But it is so worth every penny anyway. I make decent, delicious pasta. I’m not claiming to be an artisan by any means, so if you are like me, just wanting to make great pasta from scratch to feed your family, here it is.

Let’s face it, most times my family do not appreciate the smaller nuances of good food and just want supper now “BECAUSE I’M STARVING MOM!”

Homemade Egg Pasta

I use this recipe to adapt my pasta to the mixer.

• 3 1/2 cup organic, unbleached flour
• 4 farm-fresh room temperature eggs
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp water

Add all to bowl of mixer with paddle attachment and mix on setting 2 for 30 seconds.

Change to dough hook and knead for 2 minutes.

Take out of mixer bowl, and hand knead for 2 minutes more. (Dough should not be sticky but more drier to the touch)

Let rest for 20 min. This really helps with the pliability of the dough.

Have a cookie sheet ready with a small amount of flour on it ready.

Separate into 4 pieces. Pat the dough into a flat disc about a 1/2 inch thick. Feed through the pasta sheet attachment at an angle so the dough feeds through smoothly. Depending on your brand of flour I find sometimes it may break off a lot into pieces and need to be formed back into a disc, to go through again. I feed this sheet three or four times back through on setting 2 for thickness and pliability on the roller attachment. .

Either use the pasta in sheets, make ravioli, tortellini or cut into noodles using the other attachments. Toss with flour lightly and lay flat on tea towels for up to an hour.

After an hour, either cook the pasta (3-5 minutes in salted water ) or freeze the pasta in freezer bags. No need to do anything to it to freeze, just toss a few servings in each bag, and label. To cook from frozen it’s more like 5-7 minutes in salted water.

Whenever I make this, I make three batches right after the other, while the first batch is resting for 20 min, as I am already in the trenches. I do not double the batches in the mixer, but make more subsequently. It turns out better quality and I can work with the smaller batches for tossing with flour, dough resting etc.

Enjoy and I hope you have as much fun as we had the other day making homemade pasta.

Love,

Jenn xx