How to make your own pasta
Step-by-step instructions on how to make fresh pasta
Today is world pasta day!
Discovering home made pasta has given me the energy to never turn back! The flavour, texture and just how easy it is to make home made pasta gives me no excuse not to make it fresh. Making pasta by hand is also great activity to do with kids.
How to make Pasta Dough
Use 100 grams of flour to 1 egg and multiply out to make as much as you need.
Make a little nest out of the flour on a clean kitchen counter.
Break the eggs in the centre and use a fork to break the yokes and mix the eggs, being careful not to break the flour wall. If you prefer, you can whisk your eggs before pouring them inside the well, but just know that that’s not how Italian Nonnas do it!
With your hands, gently mix the flour into the eggs and make it into a ball.
In the beginning the dough should feel quite dry, but the longer you knead it, the more sticky it should become.
Ideally, you should knead your dough for about ten minutes until the dough is smooth.
If the dough stays too dry you can add a little water by running water over your hands and then continuing to knead.
If the dough stays too sticky, you can dust a little flour over until you get to the right consistency.
Wrap your dough ball some cling wrap and leave it to rest overnight in the fridge, or a minimum of 30 minutes on room temperature.
Once rested, cut the dough into even sized pieces.
Whilst you are working on the first peace, keep the rest inside cling wrap to prevent it from drying out.
Flatten the first ball of dough with a rolling pin to just over a cm thick.
Use a pasta maker to roll your pasta, starting with the widest setting. Roll your pasta through at least three times until it passes through without resistance, then change the setting to narrow the space between the rollers.
You will need to pass the dough through the rollers two or three times for each of the first three settings, thereafter one or two passes will be enough.
Once you’ve made your own pasta, try one of these pasta recipes:
About Shawn Godfrey
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).
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Discovering home made pasta has given me the energy to never turn back! The flavour, texture and just how easy it is to make home made pasta gives me no excuse not to make it fresh. Making pasta by hand is also great activity to do with kids.