How do I make pasta
Mary Jane
I am looking for recipes to make pasta
from scratch, any and all recipes would
be helpful.
Also I am looking for a very good
pasta machine, top of the line.
Edwin Pawlowski
news:rs716.3587$wk.32...@news1.mia...
This will stir things up. What is top of the line to you? The Aatlas pasta
machine with rollers or some extruder that makes a gummy pasta? My
preference is the Atlas but I'd buy it with the motor. Kitchen Aid now has
a roller attachment for their machine but I've never seen it. Worth checking
out if you have the KA mixer.
As for recipe, it is semolina flour, eggs, a little water. Recipes will
come with the machien to get you started. Add moisture as needed.
Ed
e...@snet.net
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome/
wcollings
> "Mary Jane" <sur...@email.msn.com> wrote in message
> news:rs716.3587$wk.32...@news1.mia...
> > Hi Friends,
> >
> > I am looking for recipes to make pasta
> > from scratch, any and all recipes would
> > be helpful.
> >
> > Also I am looking for a very good
> > pasta machine, top of the line.
I just researched the topic in putting together my Xmas list!
You basically have four options in roller-type pasta makers. Both Atlas and
VillaWare Imperia sell basic heavy-duty hand-crank pasta machines that are
pretty much the standard home use machines. They come with two cutters for
different size pastas (2mm wide and 6 mm wide) and you can order additional
cutters -- although there probably isn't really much reason to do so.
These machines sell anywhere from $30 on sale to $65 depending on where you
buy them. You can buy an optional motor to replace the hand crank. Some
people like the motor, some don't. Personally, I can't imagine that cranking
the machine for typical home-use batch sizes would present any great
hardship and it probably gives the beginner a bit more control over the
speed of the process.
You can get the same basic quality in a set of three rollers/cutters for the
Kitchen Aid mixer. These three rollers duplicate the three functions of the
Atlas -- rolling the dough and two sizes of cutters -- with the mixer
providing the motor. This kit sells for $100 and seems to be as heavy duty
as the Atlas. I'm not sure that having the rollers mounted to the front of
the Kitchen Aid a foot above the counter is the ideal setup ergonomically,
but it probably works just fine since you have both hands free to guide and
catch the pasta.
The "high-end" option in a home pasta roller is the Belpasta Trattorina.
Same basic function as the Atlas but in a larger, wider, heavier unit that
allows you to roll wider sheets of pasta (7.75 inches versus 6 inches wide)
and thus speed up the process a bit. It has two built-in cutters and I don't
think any optional cutters are available for it. The Trattorina sells for
anywhere from $80 to $120 depending on where you buy it. It looks really
nice.
After researching the subject recently, I can't identify any other options
that really make sense for casual home use. Everything else in the roller
category is hideously expensive and intended for professional restaurant
use. The extruder options are universally panned. Any of the above options
should get the job done nicely.
You can see all of the options at http://www.appliances.com/dept02.html
They have some good close-up pictures of the Trattorina in action: rolling
and cutting so you can see the process.
Basic egg pasta with US ingredients is just all-purpose unbleached flour and
eggs (some people add a little olive oil, some don't). No big deal, although
there's probably a bit of a learning curve to get the consistency of the
dough just right. Marcela Hazan has detailed instructions in her book
"Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" as do most other Italian cookbooks.
Edwin Pawlowski
> These machines sell anywhere from $30 on sale to $65 depending on where
you
> buy them. You can buy an optional motor to replace the hand crank. Some
> people like the motor, some don't. Personally, I can't imagine that
cranking
> the machine for typical home-use batch sizes would present any great
> hardship and it probably gives the beginner a bit more control over the
> speed of the process.
Evidently you've done the book research but have not used one. Cranking is
easy enough to do, but getting the pasta in and out with one had takes a bit
of manipulation that most people just cannot do. Two hands free greatly
simplifies the ease of handling. The model we have cannot be fitted ith the
motor or we would have it. If both of us are home, no big deal, but when my
wife is doing it herself, the thir arm sure would be handy.
>
> This kit sells for $100 and seems to be as heavy duty
> as the Atlas. I'm not sure that having the rollers mounted to the front of
> the Kitchen Aid a foot above the counter is the ideal setup ergonomically,
> but it probably works just fine since you have both hands free to guide
and
> catch the pasta.
Move the KA to the table and it will work much better. We use that height
for meat grinding and sausage stuffing as it saves a lot of arm lifting.
>
> Basic egg pasta with US ingredients is just all-purpose unbleached flour
and
> eggs (some people add a little olive oil, some don't). No big deal
No semolina????? Tsk, tsk, You lead a bland life as a researcher. Get out
from the keyboad and books and into real life. Crank some semolina through
the Atlas by yourself and learn from experience.
Ed
e...@snet.net
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome/
wcollings
"Edwin Pawlowski" <e...@snet.net> wrote in message
news:v0d16.11038$OD.46...@typhoon.snet.net...
> No semolina????? Tsk, tsk, You lead a bland life as a researcher. Get
out
> from the keyboad and books and into real life. Crank some semolina
through
> the Atlas by yourself and learn from experience.
I will...as soon as Santa comes. Whadya want me to do...run downstairs and
tear into my packages under the tree tonight? <G>
Don't know about the Seminola. I can't find a cookbook author/Italian chef
that recommends it for fresh pasta dough. Many, including Marcella Hazan,
specifically and emphatically (as is Marcella's style) recommend that it is
not appropriate for fresh homemade egg pasta. Of course, many of these
authors equally emphatically point out that fresh home-made pasta and dried
factory-made pasta are not supposed to be the same -- that they are two
different, and equally good, products with the choice depending on the type
of sauce.
If you like seminola in your fresh pasta, there's no reason for anyone to
object to that. It is not, however, the most widely used recipe for basic
egg pasta.
As for the motor: I've talked to people who have had it on their Atlas and
hated using it. Others have it and love it. I don't have an opinion other
than to point out that it is available, although apparently not an
absolutely essential accessory in the pasta making process. The machine I
asked Santa to bring doesn't offer a motor, although the Imperia motor can
by jury-rigged to work.
Edwin Pawlowski
> I will...as soon as Santa comes. Whadya want me to do...run downstairs and
> tear into my packages under the tree tonight? <G>
Why not? In another hour it will be Christmas someplace in the world.
>
> Don't know about the Seminola. I can't find a cookbook author/Italian chef
> that recommends it for fresh pasta dough. Many, including Marcella Hazan,
> specifically and emphatically (as is Marcella's style) recommend that it
is
> not appropriate for fresh homemade egg pasta. Of course, many of these
> authors equally emphatically point out that fresh home-made pasta and
dried
> factory-made pasta are not supposed to be the same -- that they are two
> different, and equally good, products with the choice depending on the
type
> of sauce.
To me, it sounds like you aare making egg noodles, not pasta. It is good
for soups and some sauces, but not what I'm familiar with as being "pasta"
As long as you like it, that is what counts.
> As for the motor: I've talked to people who have had it on their Atlas and
> hated using it. Others have it and love it. I don't have an opinion other
> than to point out that it is available, although apparently not an
> absolutely essential accessory in the pasta making process.
As long as you have three arms, it is not needed. As for hating it, I don't
know why. Perhaps it does not turn at the desired speed, but it sure makes
feeding the machine easier.
Ed
e...@snet.net
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome/
Harry A. Demidavicius
Play Nice, Ed. The post was well researched and done. Didn't
make any specific pasta recipe recommendations just a general
observation.
Harry
Who has operated his hand cranked Imperia solo for years.
Samantha does this also. We do not normally use semolina flour,
but hold no brief one way or another.
luca_r...@my-deja.com
I'm reading all the previous treads, in Italy we call PAsta all kind of
food made by a flower dougt:
with normal flower is egg pasta, eat after few days it is made
with semolina, like spaghetti or maccheroni prepared by a big
industries like Barilla or De Cecco.
On my site:
www.emiliafood.com
you can found some recipes of Egg Pasta like Tagliatelle and "Comb
Maccheroni".
About the PAsta machine i have an Imperial for many years and it's
working very well.
Luca R.
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
wcollings
"Harry A. Demidavicius" <har...@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:rp6b4tsbkit5l12rp...@4ax.com...
> Who has operated his hand cranked Imperia solo for years.
> Samantha does this also. We do not normally use semolina flour,
> but hold no brief one way or another.
I wonder if Ed's strong preference for the motor and his use of semolina
flour go hand in hand. In her excellent chapter on home-made pasta, Marcella
Hazan explains that her dislike of semolina flour for this purpose is that
it makes the dough difficult to work with. Specifically, she says that it
makes the dough tear easily, making it more unwieldy to stretch and thin.
Although not strictly applicable to this discussion of pasta machines, she
says that semolina flour pasta dough is virtually impossible to roll out in
the traditional method using a long rolling pin because it simply will not
stretch properly without tearing.
Her advice is to leave the semolina flour to the makers of excellent
extruded factory
pasta and when you make a recipe that calls for the chewier, denser texture
of those pastas, go buy a box of good imported Italian dried pasta. All of
her recipes specifically recommend whether fresh homemade pasta or dried
factory pasta is appropriate with a particular sauce. For example, Fettucine
Alfredo and lasagna (in her opinion) require homemade egg pasta. Other
dishes, generally those with olive oil sauces, require the harder texture of
factory dried semolina pasta. Still others can be made successfully with
either. As a general rule of thumb, butter and cream sauces go with
home-made egg pasta while olive oil sauces go with factory pasta.
Apparently, the actual flour used in most regions of Italy for home-made
pasta is a 00 wheat flour which is actually softer with less gluten then our
US "all-purpose" flour, not more gluten like semolina. However, she says
that in the US, she gets consistently excellent results with all-purpose
flour.
She saves her most scathing comments for storebought "fresh" pasta which she
clearly feels shouldn't be eaten even it is the last available food on
earth.
TJ
>
> "Harry A. Demidavicius" <har...@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
> news:rp6b4tsbkit5l12rp...@4ax.com...
>
> > Who has operated his hand cranked Imperia solo for years.
> > Samantha does this also. We do not normally use semolina flour,
> > but hold no brief one way or another.
> I wonder if Ed's strong preference for the motor and his use of semolina
> flour go hand in hand. In her excellent chapter on home-made pasta, Marcella
> Hazan explains that her dislike of semolina flour for this purpose is that
> it makes the dough difficult to work with. Specifically, she says that it
> makes the dough tear easily, making it more unwieldy to stretch and thin.
Funny, I've rolled 100% semolina dough via an Imperia (no motor, but 4
hands). Not as thin as duram flour, but delicious. I often do 2 parts
semolina and one part duram (which I believe is just semolina ground to
a flour), and it does really really well. Oh, and I use an egg.
tj
wcollings
"TJ" <kala...@uswest.net> wrote in message
news:3A4636...@uswest.net...
> wcollings wrote:
> Funny, I've rolled 100% semolina dough via an Imperia (no motor, but 4
> hands). Not as thin as duram flour, but delicious. I often do 2 parts
> semolina and one part duram (which I believe is just semolina ground to
> a flour), and it does really really well. Oh, and I use an egg.
Good ol' Marcella says that it can be rolled in a pasta machine, but is
virtually impossible to roll by hand with a rolling pin.
Myra
"wcollings" <wcol...@mediaone.net> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:NTp16.15447$1M.40...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
but I usually use 'grano duro' (duram wheat). Semolina is 'not' used for
'pasta all'uovo'. Pasta all'uovo is 'only' flour and eggs, add a half an
eggshell of white wine to take away the eggy smell. No oil, no salt.
Myra
in Rome
>
>
wcollings
> Evidently you've done the book research but have not used one. Cranking is
> easy enough to do, but getting the pasta in and out with one had takes a
bit
> of manipulation that most people just cannot do. Two hands free greatly
> simplifies the ease of handling. The model we have cannot be fitted ith
the
> motor or we would have it. If both of us are home, no big deal, but when
my
> wife is doing it herself, the thir arm sure would be handy.
Hey, Ed. Thought I'd give an update on losing my pasta making virginity this
afternoon. Figured I'd break in the new pasta machine with something pretty
simple before moving on to stuffed raviolis, so we made Fettucini Alfredo.
Making the pasta went without a hitch. Made an extra large batch so I could
use part of it as a trial run, both to clean the gunk out of the machine and
to give myself on trial run on some throw-away dough.
No sweat. The process went pretty much according to plan and the dough was
much easier to handle than I expected. We were able to thin it out all the
way to "9" on the machine, which produced gossamer-thin sheets of pasta. No
sticking, no problems at all. Let it dry for 5 minutes or so on dish towels
and ran it through the cutters, again with no hassles. I was really
surprised that there was no tearing, especially when we got to the very thin
settings on the machine.
The only thing I'll change the next time around is to start with wider
sheets. The dough did not stretch sideways as much as I anticipated, so we
ended up with long strips that didn't take advantage of the width of the
Trattorina's rollers. I'll work on getting my dough wider from the get-go
next time. It'll probably take me a few more times to get a handle on how
much dough to roll out in each strip and what shape to start with.
Feeding the pasta while cranking was no sweat. I think the design of the
Trattorina may help. The dough feeds horizontally through the rollers rather
than vertically and is well-supported on the feed-side by the large rounded
"belly" of the machine. So once you get it started, you can just let go of
the pasta altogether. It just smoothly slides along the counter and up into
the rollers with no assistance, so you can concentrate on gathering it up
out the ass-end of the machine.
sf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Wed, 27 Dec 2000 04:45:31 GMT, "wcollings" <wcol...@mediaone.net>
wrote:
wcollings
<sf> wrote in message news:3a4a679b...@news.pipeline.com...
> Trattorina? That's a new name for me. Where'd you find it?
I found the Belpasta Trattorina machine available at a number of places on
the web, just doing a search on "Trattorina" in the NorthernLight.com search
engine.
Here's one place that sells all of the popular brands and has good detailed
pictures of the Trattorina:
http://www.appliances.com/dept02.html
Here's the Belpasta website:
http://www.belpasta-trattorina.com/imagine.htm
The Trattorina is a beautiful piece of equipment, made in Peru.
Functionally, it is the same as the Atlas or the Imperia, but larger,
heavier, and prettier. The pictures don't really convey how much larger it
is than the Atlas. The rollers are 7.75 inches wide versus 6 inches, so you
can roll a wider sheet of pasta. The thing weighs 12.5 pounds. My initial
impression is "solid".
The two cutters (2mm tagliatteli and 6 mm fettucine) are built into the
machine. There is an optional ravioli maker attachment, but as far as I
know, they don't offer any additional cutters. The thickness adjustor for
the rollers is infinitely variable: it has 9 numbers that pop up in a
window, but you can set it anywhere in between those settings as well.
I've seen it priced anywhere from $79 to $119.