Fresh Pasta Dough

Quite often I do make fresh pasta and it’s always better to use than dried box pasta (not to discount dry pasta for its convenience however). But, for me, part of the fun of making pasta is that it’s quite hands-on.

Ingredients

• 3 x 1 cup all-purpose flour, bread flour or semolina (or a combination thereof)
• 3 x ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 x 1 large egg

This recipe is proportional, which is based around the egg (since it’s the least divisible, obviously). It also uses the “well technique” of making pasta, since it requires next to no equipment.

As for what flour to use, you can use all semolina to make a semolina pasta, or all flour. Or a good mix would be half semolina and half flour. A high gluten (protein) flour like the bread flour is good for pasta dough.

Directions

• Sift together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
• Dump your dry ingredients into a heap onto a large clean cutting board & make a well in the centre.
• Crack your eggs into the flour well.
• Using a fork lightly beat the eggs and begin to gradually encorporate the flour.
• You can do this by using the tip of fork tines to bring flour into the eggs a little bit at a time while you stir.
• When it begins to come together into a clumpy mess, you can switch to a dough scraper to continue kneading in the flour or, as I prefer to, use your (clean) floured hands.
• Continue kneading and the dough will begin to smooth out and start to look like the below.
• When the dough becomes smooth, form it into into a nice ball, lightly flour it & wrap it in plastic.
• Let it rest at room temperature for at least a half hour, before forming and cutting.
• Optionally, you can refrigerate it for several days or roll it into sheets and freeze.