A Lesson in Noodling
On the few occasions that I’ve made pasta from scratch, I’ve felt downright angst-ridden at not being able to produce uniform sheets of perfectly rectangular pasta. The ones you see in foodie magazines are always exactly the same length and shape, but mine never looked like that! Today, I found out why: They cheat. Their pasta sheets are trimmed for their photo-ops, making home cooks like me feel like linguine losers.
This culinary epiphany came courtesy of my Aunt Lena, family matriarch and keeper (in her head, not on paper) of all the Caputo family recipes. I recently spent the day at her house, learning how to make pasta her way—the right way. What had I been doing wrong? A few things:
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1) I mixed the dough with a food processor, which made it stiff. Only by kneading it with your hands can you feel if the texture is right.
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2) I only let the dough rest one time, which made it even stiffer. It also made ME stiff, since I didn’t get any relaxing wine breaks*.
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3) Because my dough was so unyielding, I had to run it through the roller to flatten it out many more times than normally would be necessary; this made the process take way longer than it should have!
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Sure, our pasta sheets varied in length and width, and had rounded ends instead of perfectly straight edges. But these babies were the real thing—and more delicious than anything I’ve ever attempted to make with a star chef’s recipe. As a bonus it only took us about 2 hours to make twice the amount of pasta I’d previously made solo in 5-6 torturous hours.
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Here’s how we did it, step-by-step—no off-camera tricks, no airbrushing:
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Ingredients:
- 5 lb. bag of all-purpose flour
- 12 eggs (room temp.)
- 16 oz. tepid water
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Pour flour into a large, wide bowl and make a well (hole) in the center. Pour the water into the well, crack eggs into the well, and mix them with your hands to break the yolks. Using your hands, begin scooping flour into the well a little at a time from the sides of the bowl and mix into the eggs. (Don’t mix too vigorously.)
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Dump dough out of bowl onto a table and knead. (Don’t push down hard or dough will become stiff; instead, push your hands across the top of the dough and roll away from you with fingers curved over the dough.) Knead into a log shape. (Dough need not be perfectly smooth.) You can cut the roll in half to make dough easier to work with.
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Cover dough with bowl (turned upside down) and let it rest 10-15 minutes. While you’re waiting, relax and drink some wine (very important!).
Knead again for a few more minutes until dough is smooth, then cover with bowl and let rest for another 10-15 minutes (don’t forget the wine).
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Cut each dough roll in half; add a little more flour if needed.
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Knead again, dust dough rolls with flour. Cover and rest again, 10-15 minutes (again with the vino).
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Cut rolls into slices and dip each one in a pie plate filled with flour to coat. (Brush off any extra flour.) Roll each slice with a rolling pin to flatten into small ovals.
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Roll dough slices through pasta machine three times, at the 8, 4 and 2 settings. When dough is coming out of the roller, pull on it gently to stretch it out. (You shouldn’t need to roll it more than once on the same number.) Dough should be smooth, elastic and not too thick.
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Lay sheets on a tablecloth, dust with a little flour and turn them over to let dry. When edges begin to dry (in about 20-30 minutes), the pasta is ready to cut. (Don’t let it dry too much, or sheets will buckle and get caught in roller.) What should you do while you’re waiting? You shouldn’t need to ask!
Put a pie pan beneath the cutting roller to catch pasta as it comes out. Feed dough into the cutter to make angel hair or linguine, sprinkle with a little flour and fluff with fingers to make “nests” on a tablecloth. Leave the pasta to dry overnight, then carefully turn over to finish drying. (Or, you can cook the pasta immediately after cutting, if you like.)
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Estimate 1.5 “nests” per person as a main course (you’ll probably have a little left over). Full recipe makes about 30 nests.
