Pasta Dough

Pasta Dough = 3 parts flour : 2 parts egg

While there are numerous pasta dough recipes, and while many chefs simply mix by sight, a 3 : 2 ratio of flour to egg works perfectly every time. If you have a scale, here is how easy it is: set a bowl on the scale, add an egg for every full serving you want to make, then add 1 ½ that weight in flour. So if you’re making two full portions, use 2 large eggs (about 4 ounces) and add 6 ounces of flour. If you’re making dinner for six, 6 eggs (about 12 ounces) and 18 ounces of flour.

The 3 parts flour, 2 parts egg ratio always works. If the weather is extremely humid or if you store your flour in the freezer, the dough may be a little sticky, in which case you should add a little flour. If you can find 00 flour, Italian flour of a very fine grind, it results in a wonderful texture, but all-purpose flour works great as well. The ratio is golden.

If you don’t have a scale, standard volume ratios work fine to a point. Most common volume ratios are 3 to 4 eggs for every 2 cups of flour, but I prefer Marcella Hazan’s ratio of 2 eggs per 1 cup of flour, a good alternate ratio if you find yourself scaleless.

Another way to achieve the pasta dough you prefer every time is to remember that large eggs weigh about 2 ounces each and a cup of flour typically weighs 5 ounces, so if you were making a 3-egg pasta, you would know to use a scant 2 cups of flour.

image

When cutting thin strands of pasta, here tagliolini, be sure your dough is well floured, or the strands may stick together once they’ve passed through the blades.

No matter how you do it, whether by weight or eggs per cup, making your own fresh pasta is not difficult to do and results in flavorful noodles with a unique texture, delicate but strong, far different from dried pasta. Also, pasta dough is a joy to work with—indeed, many chefs say that of all the tasks they perform in the kitchen, their favorite is making pasta. It forces you to slow down, to think, and the feel of the dough provides a great tactile pleasure.

As with bread dough, the most important part of pasta making is the kneading, the aligning of the gluten network that gives you the texture and elasticity that you want. (There are two schools of thought on how this is achieved, both of which I’ll describe, and both of which work well. One, described below, is achieved via kneading, the other, described in Rich Egg Yolk Pasta, Pasta Dough, via as little kneading as possible, with the idea that you allow the rollers to do the kneading. It’s a matter of personal preference.) Pasta dough should always be kneaded by hand, and this takes a little time. You can mix the egg and flour in a food processor, but the blade cuts, so if you choose this method, you still must develop the gluten by hand; use the machine only to incorporate ingredients, which is just as easy to do by hand for smaller quantities and doesn’t leave you with a food processor bowl and blade to clean. For larger quantities, a standing mixer with a dough hook works well. But, again, kneading is the critical point in making pasta. Happily, kneading by hand is fun to do, meditative, and stress releasing. Appreciate the texture of the dough—there’s nothing else quite like it. You can feel the dough changing as you work it, growing increasingly smooth as the gluten aligns, until it has almost a velvetlike texture. Pasta dough may be one of the best products to work in your hands, from a purely textural standpoint.

You can roll dough on a floured surface, let it dry a little, then roll it up and slice it as you would a chiffonade—a good way to make the wide pasta such as pappardelle—but a pasta machine with rollers is the best from a standpoint of efficiency and quality. Remember that rolling your dough is still part of the kneading process. You can’t rush it. The dough has a spirit of its own and can only be pushed so hard. To ensure the dough reaches the full width of the roller, I cut the following dough into 4 or 5 ¼-pound pieces and roll each one on the largest setting, then fold these pieces in thirds, turn them sideways so that the widest edge is on the roller, and reroll through the largest setting. I then put each piece through each setting once, down to the penultimate setting or the final setting.

As for the home appliances that mix and extrude pasta, Hazan’s comments in her book are wise: “Do not be tempted by one of those awful devices that masticate eggs and flour at one end and extrude a choice of pasta shapes through the other end. What emerges is a mucilaginous and totally contemptible product, and moreover, the contraption is a nuisance to clean.”

Basic pasta dough, like a basic lean bread dough, can be taken in any number of flavor directions, often with dramatic color presentations, such as with the classic spinach pasta or a tomato pasta, and can be enhanced with different fats such as olive oil, or aromatics such as pepper and thyme. This is fine, but for the most part, flavors should be added in the form of a sauce or garnish, and ingredients such as spinach are added for color more than for flavor.

Basic Pasta Dough

The traditional method for making pasta is to form a mound of flour on your cutting board, make a cup in the center, crack the eggs into the cup, then swirl the eggs so that the flour combines gradually and evenly. But this amount of egg is somewhat difficult to contain in this amount of flour; it tends to run over the edge. So I recommend making your mound of flour in a mixing bowl and removing the dough once it has come together.

This quantity is perfect for 2 large portions or 4 appetizer portions, and because of its size is easy to mix and knead. It can, of course, be doubled. The dough should take no more than 20 minutes from start to finish. It should be allowed to rest (to relax the gluten) for at least 10 minutes after kneading and before rolling, wrapped in plastic. The dough can be refrigerated for an hour and up to 24 hours before rolling. Rolled and cut pasta can be bagged and frozen for up to a month.

9 ounces flour (about 1 ½ cups)

6 ounces eggs (3 large eggs)

Place the flour in a mixing bowl and make a cup in the center. Crack the eggs into the cup. Using your fingers, stir the eggs, gradually incorporating the flour. Alternately, you can combine the flour and eggs in a food processor and pulse just to mix them. When the dough comes together, remove it from the bowl or food processor bowl and knead it on a floured board or countertop, pressing it with the heel of your hand, folding it over, heel, fold, heel, fold, until it’s velvety smooth. This will take 5 to 10 minutes.

Form the dough into a disk, wrap it in plastic, and let it rest for at least 10 minutes and up to 1 hour. (This dough can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours.) Cut into 4 equal pieces, roll them to the desired thinness, and cut. If you’re cutting the pasta with a machine into tagliolini rather than fettuccine, it’s helpful to let the sheets of pasta dry a little before you cut them or make sure they’re well floured.

Another practical matter. Whatever surface you knead on will get a patina of flour and egg on it. I use the side of a large offset metal spatula to scrape this patina off the countertop, which is far quicker and easier than doing it with water and a sponge (which will just get gooey with non-water-soluble gluten)—or you can use any flat-edged metal spatula or, of course, a bench scraper, a tool made expressly for this purpose and used by bakers.

SERVES 3 TO 6

What You Can Do Now That You Have the Pasta Dough Ratio

Pasta Verde (Green Pasta)

Spinach pasta should be a deep rich green to add a dramatic color to an ordinary pasta dish. Because of its color, it can be sauced simply, with some cream and butter and gratings of fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano, and still give the satisfaction of a more complex dish. It will, of course, taste like fresh pasta, not fresh spinach. If you want the flavor of fresh spinach, use it on the pasta, not in it.

Thirty years ago, spinach pasta was virtually unheard of in America. When a young chef named Thomas Keller, cooking at the Palm Beach Yacht Club, wanted to try a new dish he read about in Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes that called for spinach pasta, he couldn’t find it, and so, clever lad, he put green food coloring in the spaghetti water. The unusual color, combined with the salt leached out of the hot prosciutto, rendered the dish unappetizing and inedible. Happily, Keller would come quite a ways in the recipe department in the ensuing years.

Tellingly, the recipe for the dish is Tagliatelle Verde con Prosciutto—Green Pasta with Prosciutto—greenpasta, not spinach pasta.

3 to 4 ounces blanched, shocked spinach, squeezed of excess moisture, roughly chopped (you’ll need 7 to 8 ounces raw spinach for 3 ounces cooked and drained)

12 ounces flour

6 ounces eggs (3 large eggs)

Put the spinach in a food processor and pulse several times to puree it. Add the flour and eggs and process until a stiff dough comes together (if it’s too moist, add more flour). Remove from the bowl and knead for 5 to 10 minutes until smooth (if it’s sticky, flour your work surface liberally). Wrap and rest it for at least 10 minutes and, refrigerated, up to 24 hours. Roll and cut as desired.

YIELD: 20 OUNCES PASTA DOUGH, 4 TO 6 PORTIONS

Rich Egg Yolk Pasta

This very rich, flavorful (and sticky) dough is delicious as is, just dressed with a little olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano, but it also makes wonderful ravioli.

10 ounces flour

6 ounces egg yolks (7 to 10 yolks or ½ to 2/3 cup)

2 ounces egg (1 large egg)

1 ounce water

½ ounce olive oil

Put the flour in a mixing bowl and stir a small hole in the center of the flour. Put the remaining ingredients in the hole and stir the yolks and liquid with your fingers to gradually incorporate the flour into the yolks. When the dough has formed, remove it from the bowl and knead it just until it comes together. Shape it into a rectangle and wrap and rest it for at least 10 minutes and, refrigerated, up to 24 hours. Roll and cut as desired.

YIELD: 18 OUNCES PASTA DOUGH, 4 PORTIONS