How to Make Your Own Pasta

Pasta is one of those foods that most people just don't think about. Boil some water, open a package of spaghetti, and toss it in the pot. What could be easier? It's a fast, cheap, versatile meal, and it's relatively foolproof. So what would make you reconsider? How about knowing that you can easily make your own pasta with only a small increase in time and labor? How about knowing that homemade pasta is cheaper, and tastes better than store bought? Are you interested yet? If so, read on.

Your main tool for making your own pasta is....a pasta machine! Surprise, surprise. A manual one will do the trick quite well. Look for one that is solidly constructed with a nice sturdy hand crank. You'll also need a good mixer for making your pasta dough. Once you have those two things, you're set. The main ingredient in pasta dough is semolina flour. In fact, in the pasta recipe I use, semolina flour is the only ingredient!

Here's how it goes:
In a large mixing bowl, put 2 ¾ cup of semolina flour. Add 1 cup of water or other liquid (more on this later). Mix them together until they're well incorporated (this is where the good quality mixer comes in). The mixture should feel wet enough to hold together, but not sticky. Separate the dough into baseball-sized lumps and wrap them individually in plastic wrap. Wrap them well- any part that is exposed to the air will dry out. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. This dough will keep for at least a week, so my usual method is to make up a batch at the beginning of the week and use whatever I need for each meal.