Basic Pasta Dough

This is a very easy and simple recipe for homemade pasta. It has the perfect texture, plumps up when cooked and makes the perfect base for all of your favorite sauces!

I recently splurged and got myself the Kitchen Aid gourmet pasta press machine. It attaches to the standing mixer and comes with 6 different pasta blade shapes. It’s pretty amazing and has cut down my homemade pasta making time exponentially! If you do not have this fancy machine and still want to make homemade pasta just follow the recipe and roll out the dough into a very thin sheet and cut the pasta with pizza cutter. You wont get the round noodles but more of a flat noodle. You can twist into shapes and let dry and store just like you will with the pasta press.

Let’s get started!

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 1/2 cups of All purpose flour (GF flour can be substituted)
• 5 large eggs
• Healthy pinch of salt 

DIRECTIONS:

Make a mound of flour in the center of the counter or cutting board. Make a well in the center and add all of the eggs plus pinch of salt. 

Take a fork and beat the eggs together and start to incorporate the flour working from the inner rim. Keep mixing and pulling the flour in. It will start for form more into dough the more you mix. Once you have most of it mixed go ahead and start scooping the remaining flour into the mix until it becomes more of a dough texture and you can knead it.

Now that you have a dough ball, set it aside and scrape up the dried bits and dispose.

Going back to a clean surface add flour to and begin kneading the dough. You will do this for 10 minutes. The dough should be smooth and a slightly sticky. Now wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Ok after the 30 minutes is up its time for the fun part!

Attach the pasta press by following the instructions on the box.

Plug in the kitchen aid, pick the pasta shape you would like, and turn the machine on low.

Unwrap the dough ball and start to feed the press pieces of dough the size of a walnut.

Have a floured board underneath to catch the noodles as they come out.

Look at those beauties!

The fun part here is you can cut the noodles to whatever length you choose. I love pasta!

After you cut the length, lay the pasta out on the floured surface and coat slightly as to not let them stick together. Keep working the dough in batches through the press.

If making spaghetti noodles. After they have dried for a about 10 minutes on the board roll them into nests like below.

From here you can take the nests into portions and put them into quart size freezer bags. They will keep up to 2 months in the freezer. If you are wanting to cook asap (and why wouldn’t you?) The same directions apply. Boil a pot of water with salt. Put the fresh or frozen noodle in the boiling water for 3 minutes, drain and serve with your favorites sauces and ingredients.

ENJOY!