DailyBread: Pasta Dough

Whether its fettucini, lasagna, ravioli, or hundreds of other italian dishes, fresh pasta adds such a significant touch to your meals. It isnt complicated to make and with a little practice you'll be rolling long, beautiful sheets of dough.

Basic Pasta Dough

   -all purpose flour
   -eggs
   -olive oil
   -salt

The first step is to clean the counter because we are going to do everything from mixing to rolling right on it. Deciding on how much pasta you want to make is important. The batch I made with these pics was a double batch and could easily feed 6-8 people (if you made say fettucini).

-Dump about 3 cups of flour into a pile on the counter. start from the center and make a little home for your eggs.
-For 3 cups of flour, put 3 eggs, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon oil in the center.

-grab a fork and start scrambling

-once the eggs are fully scrambled start collapsing the sides and add flour as you stir

-ok, so when the dough gets nice and thick (like smooth mashed potatoes) its time to get in with the hands

-keep folding in flour and kneading the dough until all the flour is incorporated. (my hands were a little messy so i didnt get my camera). what you are looking for here is a nice smooth dough that isnt sticky. as the gluten forms its going to get a little springy and will be quite difficult to knead. knead for about 5-10 minutes. if the dough is still sticky, sprinkle more flour. if its sticky now it will be even more sticky later on and will be difficult to roll.

it should look like this...

-now we need to throw this ball of dough into a zip lock and let it sit on the counter for at least 30 minutes. this time allows the dough to relax and become supplely smooooooove. this is when i usually make my sauce or ravioli filling....yum.

time to start rolling!
if you dont have a pasta machine no worries... grab a chunk and go at it with a rolling pin!

roll big sheets for lasagna or raviolis

here is way to make hand cut fettucini.

roll it nice and thin