How to Make Fresh Egg Pasta

Remember my Kitchen Bucket List?  One of the items on it is ravioli.  And to make ravioli, you need your own fresh pasta, from scratch.  So I teamed up with Louise, who is always up for a kitchen challenge, and we spent an afternoon (and evening) implementing Operation Tortellini — a plan to get fresh stuffed pasta (oh yeah, we chose tortellini instead of ravioli) that we made ourselves.

So, voilà! I present to you stage one of Operation Tortellini — fresh pasta!

Fresh Egg Pasta with Lemon Thyme
Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Mastering: Pasta, Noodles & Dumplings – Fresh Egg Pasta, Makes 500g (1 lb)

• 390g (2 1/2 c.) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 5g (1 tsp). sea salt
• 5 g (1 tsp.) freshly cracked black pepper
• 5g (2 Tbsp.) fresh lemon thyme, chopped (optional)
• 4 eggs
• 10 ml (2 tsp.) olive oil

In a food processor, place 2 cups of the flour (and set aside 1/2 c. of the flour for later).

Add the salt, black pepper, lemon thyme, eggs and olive oil, and blitz until you get a crumbly mixture, about 10 seconds.

If the dough is too sticky, add extra flour, 2 tablespoons at a time, and blitz for another 10 seconds each time.  Your dough will start to form a ball after another 30 seconds of processing:

Turn the ball of dough out onto a floured cutting board or counter, and knead the dough for 2 minutes:

Then let it rest in a relaxarium (plate covered with a bowl) for 30 minutes:

Divide the dough into 4 pieces, using either a knife or a pastry knife, and leave one piece out on your floured cutting board or counter.  Put the remaining pieces of dough back in the relaxarium until you’re ready to use them.

Flatten the dough into a disc with the palm of your hand:

And feed it through your pasta rollers on the widest setting (we used the Kitchenaid pasta attachment):

Fold it into thirds (like you’re folding a letter to put into an envelope):

Flour it well:

Then feed it through the rollers on the widest setting again:

If your dough looks like this, you need more flour:

Repeat several times (8-10 times in total!) until you have a soft dough.

Now you’ll thin out and stretch the dough: set the rollers to the next thinnest setting and feed the dough through again, then turn the dial to one thinner and feed the dough through again, and repeat until you’re on your second thinnest setting overall.

Flour a baking sheet, and set aside your sheets of pasta until you’re ready to work with them:

Repeat the process with your remaining balls of dough:

Once you’re done stretching out all of your pasta, cut your pasta into the shapes you want to eat (stay tuned for tortellini fillings!).  We made some fettucine using the fettucine attachment for Louise’s Kitchenaid stand mixer.

At this point, flour whatever pasta you’re not going to eat right away, and pop it in the freezer.  It doesn’t keep well in the fridge.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

Boil your pasta until al dente, 3-5 minutes.  Enjoy with your favourite sauce, and marvel at how the things you make from scratch taste so much better than the stuff you can get at the grocery store.