Crank It: Homemade Pasta

Made homemade pasta last night, it was awesome!  I've made homemade pasta before, but this was my first time using my awesome thrift store find, an Imperia pasta roller machine.  Normally they're about $70, but mine was $5 at a Milwaukee-area St. Vincent de Paul.  What a score!

The dough starting to come together.

For the pasta dough I followed the Michael Ruhman ratio of weighing your pasta dough ingredients.   I also skipped the method of putting a pile of flour on your countertop to mix the dough, I did it in a bowl.  Put my bowl on the scale, tared out the weight, added two eggs to the bowl (two eggs = 4 oz), and multiplied that by 1.5 to get the amount of flour (6 oz).  Added flour and mixed it up until the dough came together, then kneaded it on the countertop for five minutes.  Five minutes is a long time when you're kneading, but luckily it's a small ball and not too tough.  Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it sit for at least 30 minutes to let the flour get hydrated.

Using the roller machine, making thin sheets of dough.

 I made a practice ball of dough (just flour and water) so I could play with the machine and clean it out since it can't be washed.  I found that it helps to let the dough dry out a little between rolling and using the cutting side.  And it's also nice to have a second set of hands, one cranks the handle while the other person feeds the dough into and out of the rollers.  It was stressful with a toddler trying to help, but we eventually got it made and into the boiling water.  I had some homemade pesto sauce cubes in the freezer, so we used that as sauce. 


Next time I want to try making lasagna with homemade pasta sheets.  I think it would be delicious, plus easier.  Running the dough through the cutter rollers was the hardest part, so skipping that step sounds good to me.