There are plenty of fresh pasta recipes on the internet and almost all of them call for Tipo '00' flour, which is fairly hard to find in South Africa and quite expensive. I am not planning on moving to Italy any time soon, so I make my pasta dough from a mixture of stone ground all-purpose flour, and semolina flour in a 50/50 ratio.
Equipment
- Pasta machine
- Rolling Pin
Ingredients
- 150 g semolina flour Plus extra for dusting
- 150 g all purpose flour (stone ground)
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- On a clean work surface, combine the semolina flour, all-purpose flour and salt.
- Make a well in the centre then add the eggs and olive oil.
- Break the yolks with a fork, then with your fingers, start mixing the ingredients from the inside out.
- Knead the dough for about 10 minutes to make it pliable. Of course, you can always employ some child labour for this step. 🙂
- Shape the dough in a ball, wrap it in cling film, and rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.
- Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface (1cm thick). This will make it easier to pass through the machine.
- At this stage, you can cut the dough into 2 or 3 equal pieces, as this will make handling easier. Work with one piece at a time, keeping the remaining pieces of dough wrapped and refrigerated.
- Run the dough through your machine's thickest setting, then fold the two ends of the sheet into the middle, and run it through again on the thickest setting.
- Now repeat this process 3 or 4 times until the dough fills out the width of the machine.
- Lightly dust the sheet on both sides and run it through one more time, but this time not all the way. Connect the two ends of the sheet as seen in the picture. Rubbing a drop of water on the sheet will help it stick.
- Run the seam through the machine, then change to a lower setting.
- Repeat this process until the desired thickness is reached. For fettuccine the no.3 setting is perfect.
- Remove the pasta sheet from the machine and cut it into smaller, equal sections. At this stage, you should have perfect lasagne sheets.
- Dust the sheets with semolina flour and run them through the fettuccine cutter.
- To prevent your fettuccine from sticking, dust them with semolina flour, using a sweeping motion as seen in the picture.
- Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until al dente (+-4 minutes).
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