Kitchenaid Pasta Experience

[Italiancook]

I gave my Kitchenaid pasta attachments their maiden voyage today. I used Giuliano Bugialli's recipe for Tagliatelle al Peperoncino (Red Pepper Tagliatelle). Two eggs netted almost 1 pound. I used AP flour, but was unhappy with the way the dough did not come together mixing it in the Kitchenaid. The dough was so crumbly I had to add water. Water is not one of the ingredients in the recipe. In addition, when I was making Bugialli's pastas by hand, I never had to add water. So I really don't know what gives, but I'm going to mix my pasta by hand from now on. Plus, using the mixer added a bowl and, in today's case, 2 beaters to be rinsed and washed.

I'm never certain which is thicker -- tagliatelle or fettucine, but I rolled the dough thinner than I would have for fettucine and called it tagliatelle when I cut it with the fettucine cutter.

I ground the 2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes in the mini-processer a few swirls. Recipe says to use a mortar and pestle, but I don't own one. The seeds did not grind up, but the Kitchenaid cutter did a great job cutting.

I created more work for myself than needed. I had purchased a pasta dryer even though years ago, I always dried the pasta flat on lightly floured surface. It was a lot of work putting the pasta on the dryer rods and spreading apart the pasta. The rack held my pound of pasta, but it would not have held more. Mike and others, how do you dry your pasta?

I put the dried pasta in a plastic bag and refrigerated for dinner tonight. The sauce he recommends is straightforward with only parsley leaves and olive oil. So even though my feet hurt from 3 hours of standing, I'll have an easy dinner.

Mike, thanks so much for your tip about rolling out smaller amounts of dough so they don't become too long. That helped a lot. I don't have much counter space. I put kitchen towels with flour on the stovetop and the smaller portions of dough fit just fine when rolled out.

Now that I've made pasta once in this kitchen and accustomed myself to the electric pasta attachments, I'm sure my next pasta-making will go much faster. Today, I climbed the learning curve.

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[Mike Nolan]

If you've got the knack for hand mixing pasta dough (a skill that has so far eluded me), you probably stop mixing in additional flour when it reaches the point where it looks and feels right. Holding back some of the flour might help when doing it in a mixer, but adding a little water is OK, too. Eggs are mostly water anyway.

I've always though tagliatelle needs to be thin enough to read newsprint through it, while fettuccine can be a bit thicker, because it usually gets a richer sauce.

A pasta skill I'd love to learn is pulling Chinese noodles. I took a course on making pot stickers and dim sum from the Confucius Institute at the University of Nebraska a few years ago, if they ever offer one on pulling noodles I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

[rottiedogs]

I learned how to make pasta by hand from my grandmother. She got out the board and set it up on the kitchen table. She would put flour in the middle of it and make a well for the eggs and water. The eggs all went it at the same time. One hand worked the flour and the eggs and the other poured water a little at time until the dough came together. It was shaped into a ball and rested for about 5 minute. Then she got what we kids referred to as the ravioli stick. In reality it was a cut off broom handle sanded smooth. It was a wedding gift from her father. The dough would get cut in half and then rolled very thin to fill the board. Filling then got spooned on and the dough flipped over to be cut into ravioli. Leftover dough would get re-rolled and cut into "strips" for the littlest kids to eat. The first time I did it by myself my hands were a mess. The dough came out right but it took me a long time to get the knack of only using one hand to mix the dough. I'm still using gram's wedding gift to roll my pasta.

[Mike Nolan]

I have dowels in several diameters that I use as rolling pins, because the ones with handles have never worked well for me. In pastry school, the instructor had two different diameter rolling pins for rolling out pie dough, as best I could figure it out, the stickier doughs got the smaller diameter one.

I have yet to figure out how to use one of those tapered French rolling pins. It always seems to me like the taper makes the middle too thin.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Mike Nolan.

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