Ever since I tried a bag of Pasta Puttana’s fresh pasta this summer, I have wanted to learn how to make it myself. However, I knew that it would take an investment in at least some sort of pasta roller, so it wasn’t until recently that I was able to finally give it a try myself. I treated myself to an attachment set for Ethel (my beautiful KitchenAid) for Christmas when the Amazon price went down to the lowest I had ever seen plus a 25% rebate. And I made a resolution of sorts to try it out in the near future.
Gourmet also has up a very helpful instructional video that takes you through the steps of making the dough, rolling it into sheets, and then cutting into noodles. I also decided to use this recipe with my “perfect pasta” flour blend that I ordered from the King Arthur website. The dough came together surprisingly easily.
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After letting the dough rest for an hour, I tested out the new attachments to create the noodles.
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After cutting the noodles, we hung them on this really cool pasta drying rack that I also bought with the attachments. In just over 2 hours, I had successfully turned eggs and flour into pasta. How sweet is that?
We cut half with the fettuccine cutters and the other half with the spaghetti sized cutters.
We decided to use the spaghetti for dinner (with mushrooms, garlic, parm, and red pepper flakes) and threw the fettuccine into a ziploc and stuck it in the freezer. I will let you know how it tastes after freezing. Let me just say, that the homemade pasta was FANTASTIC. It is not even comparable to store-bought dried. Not that I will stop eating dried pasta for a quick meal, but it really is worth taking the time to make some fresh pasta from scratch. I can’t wait to try this technique in ravioli or lasagna, especially this one.
We got that attachment as a wedding present, and I love it! We do need that pasta drying rack though, we have pasta covering every available space on the counter when we make it. My husband loves it so much he doesn’t want me to ever buy another box of pasta. With the flat sheets straight out of the roller, we made lasagna.
Whitney is right, it is so easy. We only rest our dough for about 15 minutes, so it doesn’t take too much longer than making a box of pasta, just a little more effort while waiting for the water to boil.
I’m happy to see I’m not the only one who names appliances, my KitchenAid is Charli.
Your pasta looks delicious, I haven’t gotten the pasta attachment as yet, but I’ve tried making pasta by hand a couple times, it’s really fulfilling to be able to create something so delicious, I agree with you tastewise as well as not necessarily giving up on store bought.
Where’s my shout out for helping with the super-awesome HTML tables for the pictures?
Congrats on your Tastespotting success.
Congrats on you success with the pasta. The only problem now, is that whenever someone serves you storebought ‘fresh’ pasta, you will notice
I use my handcranked Mercato Atlas (which has no name) mostly in the weekends, but the effort is worth it to have perfect pasta.
Homemade ravioli, tortelinis and other filled pastas are also awesome to make.
Stephanie, Chantal, and Lars-Thanks for dropping by!
And yes…My friend Brian provided me with a little html code to help me add lots of pics to this post. Using his GATech CompSci degree to the fullest! (JK…really, thanks Brian for all your help, I’m sure I will need more as I try to spiff up the blog more).
Mmmmm…there is nothing like fresh pasta! I haven’t made it in so long, but you’ve totally inspired me.
Thanks so much for your sweet comment on my blog today…I really appreciate your support! I do remember the days when I couldn’t run even a mile…it actually wasn’t all that long ago, just a couple of years. I remember thinking at the time that I all I wanted was to be able to run for 30 minutes straight, so that I could get a good work-out in, and here I am! Thank you for reminding me…sometimes we get so caught up in our new goals that we forget how much we’ve accomplished with old ones.
Have a great week, Whitney!
Your pasta looks delicious! I have been reading up on how to make homemade pasta, but haven’t tried it out yet. I hope it comes out as well as yours!
This just makes me wanna get a kitchenaid even more!! It looks very good! I mean the pasta!