The Best Way To Make Pasta From Scratch _ Epicurious 101

I'm Frank Proto .

I'm a professional chef and color instructor .

And today I'm gonna show you how to make fresh pasta .

And today I'm gonna show you how to make fresh pasta at home with eggs .

And without , this is how to make pasta .

101 boxed pasta is an everyday workhorse .

Making your own pasta at home or fresh pasta makes the meal a little more special .

It just takes a little time and technique in order to get it right .

I'm gonna make two doughs today .

One with eggs and one without for my egg pasta .

I'm using an Italian double zero flour , double zero flour is more finely ground than an all purpose or a bread flour .

All that really means is that this flour is milled or ground up really fine .

It supports that whole fine delicate pasta that egg pastas make .

But if you don't have double zero , use it all purpose or a bread flour .

If that's what you got , use it and then I'm gonna take my hand and just make a big , well , make sure you make this well , big enough to hold the eggs .

If you have a tiny , well , and then crack two eggs in the eggs overflow and we don't want that .

Make it big .

Don't be afraid , make a nice big volcano .

Whenever I make fresh egg dough , I usually do one egg per person .

So here I have about two cups of flour to two eggs .

So one cup of flour per egg .

I'm gonna season this as well .

A fair amount of salt .

I'm scrambling this just for consistency and so that my dough is uniform throughout .

So once they're whisked , I'm starting to bring the flour in .

Try not to break your volcano at this point .

If you put this into a mixer , you can just throw everything in , turn it on and let it go .

But I'm doing it the granny style of the nona style .

And basically , I'm incorporating the flour a little at a time so that the eggs don't spill out all over my surface or my counter .

So once we get to a point where it holds its own shape , now , I start to kind of just mix a fair amount of flour in there .

What's great about this technique is the dough is only going to take as much flour as it needs .

So at this point , I usually get rid of my fork .

I use my dough scraper , you can use your fingers if you want .

Now I just start chopping in some of this flour .

So I'm scraping up all the bits on the bottom of the board .

Basically , what I'm looking for here is that my dough is not wet anymore and it's not going to be sticking all over my hands .

Now , my dough has come together , we're gonna start to need it , needing the dough activates or works the gluten .

And basically gluten is a protein that gets stretchy and springy after you work it gluten is what makes your pasta chewy .

If you don't work your pasta dough enough , you're not gonna get that nice chewy bite to your pasta .

And basically what I do when I need , this is I push down with my body weight , push away from me , fold it in half , give it a quarter turn , push down with my body weight , fold it in half , give it a quarter turn .

And I just keep doing that until I get a nice elastic and smooth dough .

And this is what I'm looking for .

Press down , it's going to spring back .

That's how I know I have some gluten formation in my dough .

If you press down and it stays down , you either need to add more flour or you need to keep needing my dough is nice and elastic .

I'm gonna wrap it in a piece of plastic .

And the reason I do this is so that the dough doesn't dry out anymore .

If it dries out , it's gonna get kind of like an alligator skin , it's gonna be really hard to roll out .

If I try and roll it out at this point , I'm gonna roll it and it's going to spring back .

If I let it relax for about 20 to 30 minutes .

When I roll it , it's gonna hold that nice flat shape .

I'm using plastic .

If you don't want to use that , you can wrap it in a clean towel or you could take a bowl and turn it upside down over the dough .

That's my egg dough .

I'm gonna let this rest for about 20 minutes and then we can roll it out .

Pasta dough made with eggs tends to be a little more delicate .

A little richer .

Whereas pasta doughs made with just water tend to be hardier and hold heavier sauces a little more dense .

I usually refer the one without as a semolina dough because I'm gonna use semolina flour .

It has a little more texture to it .

It's a little more grainy than a finely ground flour .

And most of the time that you buy boxed pasta , it's usually made from water salt and selina flour .

So I have about two cups of semolina and about two thirds cup of water and a hefty pinch of salt .

Don't break the walls of your volcano and start working in your semolina .

I love using bent scrapers that cost about a dollar and they're a great gadget to have to clean up surfaces to cut dough and they're totally worth it .

It's a super versatile piece of kitchen equipment that costs nearly nothing .

Ok .

So now that it's coming together , I can see that the dough is just a little dry .

So , all I'm gonna do is add a little bit of water .

You don't want to go crazy here .

If you have to add water , if you have to add flour , you do it in small measures .

You might be wondering , can I over mix this and form too much gluten ?

Yes , you can .

But by that time you'd probably be passed out on the floor because you're so darn tired , your arms will wanna fall off and we're gonna wrap this for the same reason .

We wrapped the egg dough .

We didn't want it to form a skin .

Put it aside , let it sit for about 20 minutes and then we can roll that out too .

We're gonna start with the selina dough .

I'm gonna put the egg dough aside , forget about it for a sec .

Just , it's gonna be ok .

Just leave it alone .

Cavill is basically a smooth outside with a shell like interior .

It looks kind of like an elongated seashell .

Cavitt tends to be a little more dense .

It tends to be a little more of a hearty and chewy pasta .

That's why this Semolina dough works really well for it .

Cavatelli can be formed with just your hands .

Uh I have a couple of pieces of equipment I'm gonna use as like options .

You can see different options for it .

I'm gonna cut a little piece of the dough off and leave the rest covered because I don't want this to dry out .

What I'm gonna do here for the Cavill is just roll this out into a snake .

So I'm just gonna cut these into kind of a little long nuggets .

I try and keep these at a uniform size so that all the pasta cooks evenly , they don't have to be exact .

Just try and keep them as uniform as possible .

Now , you could buy a board , they're about 10 bucks online .

Uh But I had a tree go down in my backyard and I made this one myself .

You could see more projects like this on my other channel .

Proto makes this to me is the best way to make cavatelli pasta shapes are basically made in order to hold or capture a sauce .

So this method to me not only gives you the little cup that holds the sauce , it gives you some nice ridges on the outside .

So you press your dough ball down and squeeze right .

So I'm pressing my dough ball down , pushing down and away from myself and making that nice cup .

Those ridges and that cup in the middle are the surface area that holds your sauce .

So this to me is the more classic shape .

If you want to use your finger , you can take your thumb , press down and roll away from you to form that nice kind of Cavatelli shape .

You can see , there's like an interior shell a outside .

So that's , that's our nice shape we got there .

That's our Cavill with no special equipment .

Just to prove that it can be done .

Grandma's everywhere .

I've been doing this for years .

It's not complicated .

Another way to do this is with a butter knife and this one I'm gonna pull towards myself , light angle to the board .

A little bit of downward pressure and pull towards yourself .

The downward pressure lets the pasta kind of stick to the board a little .

It kind of squeezes the pasta out the other end .

At the end of the day , there's really no difference between the knife and the finger technique .

Some people just feel more comfortable with a knife .

They get a knack for it .

It's kind of a knack thing .

The next method is an overturned fork with a fork technique .

I just take the fork .

I'm not using it like I'm eating , I turn it upside down .

I'm kind of giving these a little squish and I'm pushing down into the fork and away from myself just to kind of form that cup .

What I'm accomplishing here with this is I'm making really fat ridges .

So the sauce doesn't just sit inside the seashell .

It grabs the outside as well .

Let's put the Cavatelli aside and work with our egg dough for my egg based dough .

I'm making a papa which is a long , thick , wide pasta .

It's kind of like fettuccini , but like triple is wide .

This is a kitchenette with a flat roller attachment .

This makes it go fast and easy .

I have my dough ball .

I'm gonna unwrap it .

I'm not gonna use it all because if you try and put all of this through the machine , it's just gonna shred it .

I'm gonna do about one third of it right now and I'm gonna recover .

I'm just gonna flatten it out and I'm gonna dust it lightly with some flour .

We didn't need flour for the semolina dough because it's a nice dry dough .

This has a little more moisture to it .

So I'm just going to put some flour on the outside .

So it doesn't stick to our rollers .

I have my roller on one now .

One is the thickest , some people might think one is the thinnest but no , I roll it through with one hand and I get it with the other hand .

One thing I like to do now is give it a fold and all that .

This does is make my pasta a little more square and even , and I'm going to leave it on that number one setting and have it go through again .

I'm going to lightly dust and I'm gonna go up one , number to two , going from 1 to 2 , makes our pasta dough a little bit thinner .

As long as there's enough flour on here , you can go down another 1 to 3 and make it a little thinner .

My goal here is to go from number one to number seven .

Number eight tends to be a little too thin as you get faster with this and better at this , you can just go down the numbers at this point .

It's starting to get long and a little unruly .

I like to use the backs of my hands , not my fingers because I don't want my fingers poking through .

Now , I'm down to seven , which is the number that I want to hit .

Roll it into the machine .

If you're going to do this by hand , you would basically roll this out with a little flour and a rolling pin and then you need a nap afterwards because it takes a really long time to do so .

At this point , we can cut this in half and we have two nice sheets of pasta .

What I like to do to get my Papper doll at this point is to flour the inside really well .

So it doesn't stick to itself and then we're gonna roll it up and then I get some nice even clean cuts , lay this out flat on a tray .

I try not to stack it because I don't want it sticking to itself .

You could put it really nice and close to each other , right ?

Maybe I'll stack a little and that is my finished Papper dough .

So now we have our finished Cavill and Papper Dell time to cook them .

I'm gonna cook the pasta now .

And I'm starting with the Cavatelli .

I have a pot of water here that I'm gonna salt .

Some people would say sea salty .

It's a good start .

We salt the pasta water so that the pasta absorbs the salty water .

Hence , our pasta is seasoned .

If you salt the pasta at the end , basically , you're gonna have a salty sauce with a bland pasta .

This way , our pasta is seasoned , our sauce is seasoned and it's magic .

The water is seasoned and I want it to be boiling before I add the pasta in .

When I put the pasta in , it's gonna stop boiling .

But I want it to as quickly as possible back up to the boil .

So first of all , the pasta doesn't stick together and it doesn't just sit on the bottom and start to get mushy .

We want this pasta to have texture and if it's not boiling and not moving around , it's just gonna mush out and get soggy water's boiling water is seasoned .

Pasta goes in , give it a stir .

So it doesn't stick to the bottom and it doesn't stick to each other .

How do you know when your pasta is done for me ?

The only way you know that your pasta is done is to actually taste it .

People say throw it against the wall .

What does that prove ?

My pasta is starchy ?

That proves nothing to me .

Beat it , taste it , put it in your mouth hole while my pasta is cooking , I always have my sauce ready to go .

The sauce waits for the pasta .

Not the other way .

Have your sauce hot and ready to go in a pan before you even start cooking your pasta .

Now that my pasta has been cooking for a few minutes , I have this thing .

It's called the spider because it kind of looks like a spider web and it's just a great straining tool to have in your house .

I usually let my pasta just cool a little and then I give it a taste perfect .

I have a little chew to it .

The pasta is cooked all the way through .

It's not doughy and gummy .

It has some bite to it , it tastes cooked .

So now what I do is I take my spider , I get my pasta out and it goes directly into the sauce .

I don't drain it all that .

Well , I want some of that pasta water in there .

The pasta water has salt and starch and that salt and starch is going to help make my finished sauce a little more creamy .

So my sauce looks a little thick .

I'm going to go into my pasta pot , get some of the water and dump it in .

So it loosens my sauce .

So in Italy we'll cook it about three quarters of the way and finish the cooking process in the sauce .

So it's done cooking .

Let's throw it on the plate a little bit of our basil on top .

And that's my Cavill with a semolina based pasta dough .

I have my Papa Dell from our egg dough .

My water is boiling .

I'm gonna add some salt .

I have my cream sauce here and cream sauce generally gets paired with long thin noodles because it sticks really well .

And we're going to drop our pasta in the Papper Dell will cook quicker than the Cavill .

It's only gonna cook for about two or three minutes .

I'm gonna swirl it around .

The Papper Dell is super thin .

That's why it's gonna cook so quickly .

I like to use tongues for long thin pasta .

A spider usually it's kind of just problematic and they fall off the spider .

So I feel like tongues are the best way to go with this .

Let it cool off .

Give it a quick taste .

Smooth , silky , just a little bit of bite to it .

We're gonna take a little bit of that pasta water , swing it around .

It's important to have the burner on here because when we add the pasta water , now it's gonna be too liquid if you want some of that liquid to actually cook off a little and cook onto the pasta .

So you don't want to just do this in a cold pan .

You wanna make sure that it's cooking ?

Ok .

That looks great .

So I get my plate , I'm gonna give this a little bit of a twist .

So it makes a little bit of a bird's nest .

Just get my spoon under it .

So I don't drip everywhere .

And that's my papa dough made with egg pasta with a cream sauce .

So there it is .

It's our semolina based Cali with a nice rich tomato sauce and our egg based pale with a cream based sauce .

Yes .

It's easy to use pasta out of the box .

But when you make someone homemade pasta , they know they're loved .

It feels like a big hug .

Both of the pastas I made today have simple humble ingredients and a little bit of technique .

And if you follow the techniques that I laid out here today , you will be able to make professional , great pasta at home .