Hand-Rolled Fettuccine

 

Monday April 14, 2014 
Recipes: The Classic Pasta Cookbook by Giuliano Hazan

You know a recipe is going to be a challenge when the 2nd paragraph states “Be prepared to throw away your first few hand-rolled sheets- you are unlikely to get the hang of rolling pasta in one try.” (p.38) This statement is 100% true!  But, we didn’t let this stand in our way.  Homemade pasta–how hard can it be, right?  Wrong!  We were both smart enough to know that we should have back up pasta in the pantry.

Two ingredients, 2 1/4 cups Flour and 3 eggs. The tools; a rolling pin, sharp knife, plastic wrap and a lot of upper body strength.  The recipe calls for 00 Flour which is not easy to find.  In Italy they rate their four by how fine it is, (1, 0, 00).  00 Four is the finest, a texture similar to powdered sugar.  You can use AP Flour, but we wanted to stay true to the recipe.  We found this flour at a local Italian Importer Capri Flavors.  If you live in the Raleigh/Durham area this place is a hidden gem.  They even offer cooking classes.  And, they sell Nutella in the largest quantities we’ve ever seen!

To begin we made a well in center of the flour then broke the eggs into center.

Used a fork and began mixing the flour into the eggs.  So far so good…

When it came together we began kneading the dough by hand.

Worked the dough until it was uniform in color and smooth. This took awhile and even when we stopped we were concerned about the color and texture. Wrapped it in plastic wrap and set aside at room temperature for 20 minutes to rest.

This is where we started to struggle.  Rolling pasta dough is hard work!  Kudos to all the Italian women that have been making pasta for their families for generations!  The recipe called to roll and turn the dough 90 degrees until it was 1/4″ thick.

The next step involved stretching the dough with a rolling pin?? Not sure if we were doing it right.

After a while the dough began to stretch.  It is very difficult to stretch it evenly.  At this point it had been 2 hours since we started making the dough and we decided to move on.  All you moms that have ever tried to complete a project during nap time know that you’re up against a ticking clock!  Christina’s dough looked more like the picture and we thought hers had the best shot of being edible.

The cookbook had directions for cutting a variety of different pasta shapes, we chose fettuccine.

Then set on a sheet to dry a bit.  At this stage, Christina’s still looked promising.  Heather’s looked more like the beginnings of the noodles that are fried to go on Egg Drop soup.  Oh well…

Boil in a large pot of salted water and stir to keep pasta from sticking.

Looks yummy…. but it was gross. The texture was all WRONG!!!!  (And this is Christina’s pasta.)

Thats better! Always good to have a back up when feeding hungry kids.

We will revisit pasta again. Although we will explore other recipes and try to borrow a pasta machine from a friend.  We were glad to have had the experience and I think we both learned a lot.

By mid-day we each had one pound of semi-edible pasta.  The kids had a fantastic playdate, Baby “M” took an epic nap and the Mom’s got a great work out rolling pasta for 2 hours…. and had a great laugh!

Next Week:  Pie Crust & Pizza Dough & Garbage Bread

Tagged: Meatless Monday, Pasta