Fresh Pappardelle
A great way to start making you own Pasta
What do you need?
It’s a lie that you need any special gear to make pasta at home. Yes, it’s easier if you have a mixer and a pasta machine, but it’s by no means necessary. In this recipe, I will explain how to do everything without any special gear.
Is this the best pasta recipe?
No, it’s a basic one, an easy one, I won’t dive into the complex details and art of pasta making. If you’re into that, I recommend this post on the science of pasta making.
Ingredients
Per 100 grams of pasta (1 serving):
100 grams flour - can be all-purpose, typo 00 or semolina, or a mix. I normally go for 50/50 all-purpose and typo 00 for good silky pasta.
1 whole egg
1/4 tsp salt
Instructions
Mix all the ingredients either by hand or in a mixer. If you’re doing it by hand make a mountain with the flour on a surface and make some kind of crater in it, then crack the eggs in the middle.
Knead it all into a big firm ball, for about 10 minutes. This is harder than you think, the ball will be pretty strong. If the dough is too sticky, add some flour. If it's too dry, add a bit of water.
Wrap the ball in plastic and let it rest for about an hour (it’s not a problem if you rest it for longer). If you want to refrigerate or freeze the dough to use later, you can do that too.
After resting, cut the ball into fist-size pieces.
Now use a pasta machine or a rolling pin to make the balls flat. Once it’s pretty thin, fold it the long sides back into the middle and do it again, repeat that two times. If you don’t have a rolling pin, use a bottle of wine.
Now it’s time to make the dough thin enough to make pasta with. If you are using a machine, it’s easy, gradually increase the thin-ness of your pasta machine until it’s the second to thinnest (7 on mine). If you don’t have a pasta machine, use a rolling pin to make it so thin that you can almost see your fingers through it, but not yet. (For spaghetti you want to get thinner, but I like pappardelle a little thicker).
Lay everything in sheets on a cutting board and cut it into Pappardelle, between 2-3CM wide.
Make small heaps with the pappardelle and use flour so the things won’t stick to each other (see the header image).
Cook them between 50 seconds and 2 minutes in unsalted water (we salted the dough, so we don’t need to salt the water) and eat them with your favorite sauce, enjoy!