You know that part in Samin Nosrat’s Salt,
Fat, Acid, Heat series where she makes the
most sexy, mouthwatering pasta in Tuscany.
That’s what we are making today. We will
leave no stone unturned and answer all those
persistent pasta questions. Is “00” flour
really better than all-purpose? Should you
salt your pasta dough or should you salt the
water or both and why? Should you use a food
processor or a well method? Should you roll
with a machine or a rolling pin? And what’s
the best way to store the pasta after making
it?
When people tell me about their first attempt
at fresh pasta, they usually describe a disaster.
Basically, 3 hours wasted to produce pasta
that’s worse than the dry stuff sold in
a box. That’s what MY first attempt felt
like too. And today we’ll talk about all
those rookies mistakes and how to prevent
them.
The first mistake is choosing a pasta instructor
based on their personality or their Italian
heritage. I know they make it “look easy”
and so FUN. The problem is that they are trying
to teach you to make pasta, the way they learned
to make pasta -- by touch and feel. Think
of these chefs as native speakers of pasta.
Just like native speakers of a language don’t
need to think about grammar and vocabulary,
these chefs don’t need to think about measurements.
They can adjust as they go. Intuitive pasta
making is not for people learning from books
and screens. Unless you have an italian grandma
or experienced pasta chef hiding in your closet,
think of yourself as a foreign language speaker
of pasta. You need a lot of details and accurate
measurements if you want to make quick progress.
First let’s talk about the flour. You might
have heard that in Italy, pasta is made with
“00” flour and if you want the real deal,
you should buy 00. Well, actually, I’ve
been making pasta out of King Arthur unbleached
all-purpose flour for years, but last year
I wanted to try “00” to see what the hype
was all about. There was only one problem.
I quickly realized that there were many “00”
flours out there. What does “00” even
mean? I did a little research (in other words,
I googled) and here is what I’ve learned.
In the US, we differentiate between flours
based on their protein content. Cake flour
has very little protein. Bread flour has a
lot of protein. All-purpose flour is in the
middle. But “00” has nothing to do with
protein. It has to do with the grind. The
finer the grind, the more zeros. 00 flour
is very powdery. It IS ground more finely
than American flour. But you could have a
00 cake flour, a 00 bread flour, and a 00
all-purpose flour. Just like not all American
flour makes the best chocolate chip cookies,
not all 00 flour makes the best pasta. So
I thought If I am going to seek out a specialty
flour, I might as well get the right one -- the
one that’s intended for pasta use. I bought
it on amazon and that’s what I did my experiments
on. The protein content of this flour is 11.5-12.5%,
which is somewhere between King Arthur all-purpose
and bread flour.
So was it worth it? Yes, it was. Pasta made
with King Arthur all-purpose flour is either
firm or soft depending on how long you cook
it. It doesn’t have that chewy state you
get with 00 where the dough gradually yields
to your teeth. 00 flour is a lot more expensive
than all-purpose, so if you don’t want to
splurge on it until you get the basic technique
down, that’s totally understandable. But
at some point, definitely give it shot.
The second biggest mistake of rookie pasta
makers is sloppy measurements. “Pasta is
never the same way twice” and you know why?
Because flour is a powder and it’s compressible
so measuring it with cups is insanely inaccurate.
The eggs are different too. Weighting “large”
eggs in their shells, I found some as small
as 54g and as big as 70g. I know Samin was
shooting for an easy to remember formula of
1 cup of flour, 1 egg, 1 yolk. But pasta formula
is not a pin on your luggage combination lock.
It doesn’t need to be memorable, it needs
to be reliable and reproducible. So here is
what actually works. 300g of flour to 185g
of wet ingredients. Here is how to get the
wet ingredients. Start with 2 large eggs,
then add 3 large yolks, then add enough water
to get to 185g. Is it possible that you’ll
reach 185g with eggs alone? Very unlikely.
Maybe if you are using jumbo eggs or something.
In that case whisk them all together and pour
a little bit out until you get to 185g.
Yes, humidity and environmental factors make
a small difference too. But weighing all your
ingredients will put you very close to your
target and I’ll show you how to make that
final adjustment if necessary.
So, we’ve got flour, we’ve got eggs. What
about salt? In her book, Samin suggests that
adding salt to the pasta dough will make it
firmer and harder to knead. I’ve tested
this theory and found no difference in the
dough texture with salt vs without salt. But
what about flavor? Before the pasta ends up
in your mouth it needs to be very thoroughly
salted. How you get that salt in there is
actually up to you. I prefer to add 2 tsp
of Diamond Crystal Kosher salt to the dough
or 1 tsp of table salt. Please don’t use
morton’s kosher for this, it doesn’t dissolve
well. If I use this amount of salt in the
dough, I still need to salt the water a lot,
but not an absolutely insane amount. Samin’s
salt free dough requires a really insane amount
of salt in the water, which makes it too dangerous
to use for thinning out the sauce. You can
easily make your sauce too salty. Niki from
Seriouseat came to the same conclusion about
salt in her pasta testing. I think it’s
comforting when you can recreate someone else’s
results. It’s a thankless job both in science
and in cooking, but someone’s got to do
it.
Ok, we’ve got our ingredients. Let’s make
the dough. Put the flour and salt into the
food processor and buzz them to combine. Add
the eggs and water and spin things around
until you get a dough. Yes, you could have
done it by hand, but this is way faster. If
you don’t have a food processor and want
the details on the well method, check out
the link below the video. I explained it thoroughly
in my water based dough video several years
ago.
Get the dough out of the processor and shake
out all the flour that got stuck under the
blade and all the other bits and pieces. The
dough won’t be homogenous at this point,
so if you want those measurements to work,
you do need to get absolutely everything out
of your processor.
Work your dough for a minute before making
a decision on adjustments. It will feel a
bit wet when it first comes out, but in about
a minute it will settle down. So, don’t
even think about adding more flour until you’ve
been kneading for a full minute.
During the first minute your hands will be
very sticky, so you might want to rub them
really well to get all this dough off and
knead those crumbs in. Ok, our dough is doing
great. But if it was sticking to the counter
after the first minute of kneading, I would
knead in about 1 Tbsp of flour. Wait for it
to get completely absorbed and then decide
if I need EVEN more flour.
Kneading pasta dough is very different from
bread dough. Pasta dough is tough. It won’t
cooperate if you try to fold it all the way
in half and rotate 90 degrees on each turn.
See, it doesn’t want to stick together.
Fold just a small amount of dough towards
you. Press and rotate the dough slightly.
Fold, press, rotate. All the motions are a
lot smaller with pasta dough than with bread
dough. The goal here is to very gradually
wrap the dough around itself, which will develop
gluten and elasticity. See how the top looks
like a spiral. And the bottom is getting silky
smooth. If your dough looks rough underneath,
you might be smearing it too hard or grabbing
it with your fingers while pressing down on
it. You don’t want to rip the dough underneath.
So when you press down, make sure your fingertips
are up.
How do you know when your dough is kneaded
enough? For bread dough, you can do a windowpane
test where you stretch it into a very thin
membrane. Pasta dough is too firm for that
kind of test, so I just go by time. Once my
dough it out of the food processor, I set
my timer for 8 minutes. The third biggest
rookie mistake and insufficient kneading.
You can’t over-knead pasta dough. So if
it’s your first time and you have never
kneaded anything before in your life, go for
10 minutes of kneading since it might take
you a few minutes to become productive. And
no, you can’t knead it in a stand mixer.
Pasta dough is too tough for machines.
When you are done kneading, sprinkle the dough
with flour on both sides. Wrap tightly in
plastic and let it rest for at least 30 minutes
at room temperature. This will relax the gluten
and prevent the dough from shrinking when
you try to get it to that 1 mm thickness.
If you are not ready to roll after 30 minutes,
no worries. Just keep your dough at room temperature
until you are ready, as long as you roll it
out the same day you make it.
Now about the rolling. You have 3 options:
KitchenAid attachment, Table attachment, and
a rolling pin.
If you have a KitchenAid mixer, I strongly
suggest you buy a pasta rolling attachment.
It’s way easier to use than the manual table
thing.
The table attachment tends to wiggle, but
you can solve this problem by using the handle
as a lever to help you tighten your machine
to the table. I’ve also placed a silicone
trivet between the clamp and the table to
provide a more sticky surface, but that’s
optional. Remember to push into the handle
as you roll. Otherwise, it can fall out. Yeah,
this thing won’t get any usability awards.
Before we start rolling out the dough, let’s
prep the work surface to put it on when it’s
done. There is nothing worse than getting
a sheet of pasta out of the machine and getting
it stuck to the counter. I am using semolina
flour because it’s great at preventing sticking,
but you could use the same flour you used
for making the dough. Just to clarify. Semolina
is only good for storage. Not for rolling.
For rolling, use all-purpose or 00 and be
liberal with it. You want to avoid sticking
at all costs.
Here is our pasta dough. We are going to divide
it into 4 parts. Wrap whatever parts you are
not currently working with tightly in plastic
to prevent them from drying.
Flatten out the dough with your hands or a
rolling pin until it’s the thickness of
a pancake. Set your machine to the first setting
and feed the dough through. Fold the dough
like a letter folding it into thirds. Flatten
it out, reflour it, and feed it through.
Do this process about 4 times until you get
close to a rectangle. We are still on the
first setting by the way. We didn’t start
to thin the dough out yet.
If you feel that folding the dough in half
will get you close to the right shape, do
that. When you are happy with the shape, you
can start to thin out the dough. No, you can’t
just jump from setting 1 to setting 6. You
have to go through each setting. I prefer
to do each setting twice, because there is
always a bit of shrinkage after the first
pass.
Don’t forget to add more flour if the dough
feels sticky.
When you feed the dough through the machine,
you should let go of it as soon as it gets
caught in the rollers. This frees up your
hand to catch the dough as it comes out and
it stretches the dough over the back of the
rollers helping it to thin out.
After the 4th or 5th setting, you might want
to cut the dough in half or it will become
very long and difficult to handle. The question
is where do we stop? For any filled shapes,
and most ribbon pasta, I like to stop at 6.
Although I do each setting twice, I do the
6th setting only once. Otherwise the dough
gets too thin.
Here is what it looks like on a KitchenAid.
Set the mixer to the lowest speed. As soon
as the rollers catch my dough, I let it drop
to help it stretch and catch it on the other
side.
For very hearty ribbon pasta, I stop at the
5th setting with a few caveats. I put it through
the 5th setting 3 times, stretching it a bit
as it comes out. By the way, the best way
to carry pasta dough is on the back of your
hands.
I’ll stretch it out just a bit so that it’s
not as thin as 6, but not as thick as 5.
And last and most difficult way to roll out
pasta dough is with a rolling pin. I only
suggest you attempt this if you are using
00 pasta flour. All-purpose flour makes it
very difficult to roll out your dough thinly
enough. The fourth rookie mistake is using
American flour and a rolling pin, which is
a recipe for trouble.
Sprinkle your work surface generously with
flour and start rolling. As soon as your dough
is more oval this way, rotate it 90 degrees.
Be extremely liberal with flour. Whatever
it takes to avoid sticking. Always roll from
the center to the outside.
Now it’s more oval this way again, so we’ll
rotate it again. Keep going like this way
past the point that you think is thin enough.
Trust me. It’s not. I find that it’s much
easier to roll the pasta with a pin if you
have seen how thin it should be on the 6th
setting of a machine. Actually, not seen,
but more like felt. It’s really hard to
see the differences between such small thicknesses
in a video. You want barely thicker than a
sheet of fillo dough. It should feel like
the kind of fabric you want to wear on a very
hot and humid summer day.
If you don’t have a rolling machine and
are thinking of making hand shapes like orecchiette
or cavatelli, sorry to break it to you, but
they won’t taste good out of this dough.
You need water based dough for those. Eggs
produce much firmer, chewier pasta, the dough
we’ve made today will only taste good if
you can get it very thin. The water produces
much softer pasta. It’s great for rustic
thicker shapes, but doesn’t really work
for thin sheets. I’ll link to my water pasta
dough and some handshapes below if you want
to give them a shot.
If you are filling the pasta, do so right
away while it’s still a tad sticky. If you
are cutting your pasta into ribbons, let your
pasta sheets dry out until they feel like
leather. They should still be pliable, but
not at all sticky. When the first side feels
good, flip it and dry the other side. It will
take 15 - 30 minutes depending on humidity
of the room. If you don’t want to cook your
pasta right away, you can stack slightly dry,
but still pliable sheets between parchment
paper, sprinkle them with flour and wrap them
tightly in plastic wrap. They’ll last just
fine in the fridge for 1-2 days. I like to
cut the dough RIGHT before it goes into the
pot to prevent it from sticking together.
If you didn’t have time to dry your pasta
to the texture of skin, sprinkle it very liberally
with semolina. Actually, even if you dried
it some, sprinkle it just in case. Roll up
your pasta from both directions toward the
center. and cut with the chef’s knife on
a cutting board. You can make it as wide or
narrow as you like. Stick the dull side of
the knife into the crease like this and lift
up to unroll.
If you are dealing with a very long sheet,
cut it in half.
Since this one was only rolled to the 5th
setting, I’ll cut it into more narrow ribbons.
You can play around with thicknesses and widths
until you find the one you like. I think the
cutting into noodles is my favorite part of
making pasta. Just look at those beautiful
ribbons.
The last, but not least fresh pasta mistake
is not getting the salt right. For dry pasta,
you need way less salt in the water than for
fresh. Fresh pasta cooks in 1 minute. 2 minutes
tops. It doesn’t get a chance to absorb
a ton of water the way dry pasta does, so
the water needs to be very salty. The chefs
call it “like the sea”. But in case it’s
been a while since you swallowed sea water,
I’ll give you actual measurements. Just
realize that we all have our own salt preferences
and you might need to adjust to make it perfect
for you. For 6 and ½ quarts of water, I use
65 grams of salt. That’s half a cup of Diamond
Crystal Kosher salt or ¼ cup of table salt.
If you have some other salt, I can’t help
you with the volume. Again a reminder to be
careful with Morton’s kosher. It’s closer
to table salt than to Diamond Crystal Kosher.
This amount of salt will produce a very flavorful
pasta assuming you added salt to the dough.
If you are sensitive to sodium, use whatever
you think is appropriate.
And about the pot. A covered pot will come
to a boil a lot faster, but a covered pot
with salt will boil over unless you catch
the right moment to remove the lid. Since
I want my water to boil quickly and not to
boil over, I add the salt after the water
is almost boiling and after that I wait for
the boil without covering the pot. Dump in
your pasta. Stir. And set the timer for 1
minute. Taste to make sure your pasta is done,
and get it out. Never drain fresh pasta in
a colander. The flour you used to prevent
sticking will settle on the bottom of the
pot and will not hurt anyone if you just leave
it there. But if you dump all this water into
the colander, your pasta will be covered with
semolina mush. For long ribbon pasta, I start
with tongs and then switch to a spider spoon.
This slotted spoon has totally changed my
life. It holds a lot and drains well.
Toss your pasta with the sauce of your choice
and a healthy chunk of butter. And obviously
the sauce should be hot before you add the
pasta. You don’t want the pasta to cool
off.
In case you think that all my precision has
taken all the joy out of my pasta, trust me,
I am very happy right now. If you were eating
this pasta, you’d be very happy right now
too.
By the way, when I cook in vacation homes,
I am perfectly capable of making pasta completely
by feel. No scale, no measurement cups, no
food processor, and no rolling machine. What
do you know. All those years of accuracy didn’t
destroy my intuition. If anything they created
the intuition.
If you want to learn to make ravioli or tortellini,
here are some videos for you to check out.
Next week, we’ll make bolognese sauce to
go with our fabulous fresh egg pasta. So don’t
forget to subscribe, hit that little bell
button for notifications and if you are ever
in the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in
one of my classes.
