Making Pasta

On my recent trip to Lucca, Italy (Yes. I went to Italy...still working on editing my photos!)  I ate a fabulous creamy mushroom pasta dish.  So I got the idea to make my own pasta and try to find a creamy mushroom recipe.  There are many pasta recipes on line with great instructions.  Here's the recipe I used.  I also used my mixer even though you can make it by hand.  It was well worth the effort.

HOMEMADE PASTA RECIPE

Yield: 1 1/4 lbs dough

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour, sifted (plus extra flour for preparing)


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 4 large eggs, beaten


• 2 Tablespoons water
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I mixed the flour and salt together then added the eggs and water.

Once mixed together it was drier than I thought.

Take the dough and make it into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap.

After the dough rests I ran it through the pasta machine.  Now I didn't have a food pasta machine, but I had a craft room pasta roller.  It's all I had and it worked okay, but tough to secure to my counter top.  I'm going to look into a real kitchen pasta machine.  I ran it through the machine a few times to get it the thickness of 1/4".   

After passing it through the pasta machine I rolled it and cut it into 1/2' strips.

This was the fun part.... figuring out how to dry it.  I used a clothes hanger to hang the pasta to dry.  I did find a creamy mushroom recipe but I didn't like it...too thick and not much taste.  Then again I'm trying to match the pasta dish I ate in Italy....  The pasta was good and I will continue to make.  I'm on the hunt for a pasta machine.