Home-Made Pasta Recipe

Homemade pasta is so simple to make and fresher, tastier and healthier than store bought types. With just a few fresh, high-quality ingredients, you can adjust the flavour profile by adding your own herbs and spices.

Here’s a fun and simple recipe from our partners Marcato to use with the Atlas 150 or 180 pasta maker.

Ingredients:

5 Portions

•  500g soft-wheat “00” flour (mix 50:50 with durum wheat flour (semolina) for optional taste)
• 5 large eggs and water up to a total of 250g
• No salt!

1 Portion

• 100g flour / 1 egg

Method

Place the flour into a large mixing bowl and using your finger make a well in the centre. To the centre, add the eggs (room temperature – not cold) and a little water. Using a fork, mix the ingredients together gradually until the mix is smooth and consistant. If the dough feels too dry, add a little more water but remember pasta dough should never be sticky to the touch.

Remove the combined dough and place on a flour-dusted surface.  Knead the dough a little by hand for a few minutes. This develops the gluten. Now break it up into smaller pieces (6 parts).

View a video of the mixing stage

Setup your Atlas machine by turning the roller knob to the 0 setting (the widest setting).

Ensure it’s clamped to your work surface.

Turn the crank clockwise while feeding through a piece of the dough. Now dust the flattish pasta sheet on both sides with flour and fold in half. Feed the pasta through the rollers a couple more times until it is compressed, long and flat in shape. Cut this sheet into 2 equal pieces and flour both sides.

Now adjust the knob to 1 and feed the pasta sheets through once. Change the knob to 2 and feed through one more time again. Continue to do this through each setting until you reach your desired thickness. Cut the pasta sheets in half as you need to make rolling them more manageable. Setting 6 is used for fettuccine and 7 for tagliolini. Here’s a Marcato thickness guide download for other types.

View a video of the Atlas rolling

Cut the now fully flattened pasta cross-ways. The cut sheets should be about 25cm long. Dust them with flour generously.  Additionally, ensure the ends are nice and flat. If the pasta folds in slightly, it may stick when cutting.

Apply the cutting accessory to the pasta machine and feed the pasta sheet through the rollers to cut it. Using a stick of some kind, transfer each pasta strip to a pasta drying rack or dust with flour.  Leave the pasta to dry for 1-2 hours and then cook of transfer to an airtight container.

View a video of the Atlas cutting fresh pasta

If you intend to cook and eat the pasta later, you can always dust the lasagne type sheets with flour and store in an airtight container. When you are ready to cook, the sheets can be fed through the cutter. This will help to avoid the pasta sticking together.

Tips

• Don’t use cold eggs.
• Store fresh pasta in floured sheet form and cut when ready to cook.
• Don’t add salt (salt can be added to the water used to boil).
• Home-made pasta has a shelf life of no more than 1 month.
• You can freeze pasta, but use within 1 month.
• Cook pasta in a large quantity of water. 4l for 0.5kg of pasta.
• Use a food processor to mix the ingredients together if prefer.

Flavour Ideas

You should hopefully have a basic outline by now but why not add your own twist. You could adapt the recipe and add basil, spinach oregano, or thyme for a Mediterranean flavour, or you could add chilli powder, cumin, or cayenne pepper for a more spicy flavour.

Wholemeal Flour Pasta

Once you’ve mastered common pasta, you could try swapping part or all the 00 flour for an earthy, nutty wholemeal type.

Wholemeal flour is made from whole wheat, which means that it contains the entire grain, including the bran, germ, and endosperm. Commonly, 00 flour is used for pasta. This is a fine-ground flour that is made from soft wheat. If you choose to add wholemeal flour to pasta dough, it will make the pasta more nutritious and expand the flavour range, but it will also make the dough more difficult to work with. This is because the bran in wholemeal flour contains more fibre, which can make the dough more dry and crumbly. To compensate for this, you may need to add more water to the dough, and you may also need to knead the dough for a longer period of time. Additionally, wholemeal pasta will require a longer cooking time.

Some great wholemeal flours to add to the pasta mix:

Wholemeal Wheat (Marriage’s)
Spelt
Einkorn
Farro

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