So this summer, thanks to birthday money and money I had saved up, my dream was finally gonna come true: I was going to buy a KitchenAid mixer. Oh yeah! I had dreamed of owning one since about eight years old. But since I knew they were always in the "fancy" stores(we were dirt poor growing up haha), I thought I'd only maybe be able to get one when I was a "grown-up" grown-up(like mid-30 or 40's) someday. But alas, that someday is here and I'm not even halfway through my twenties yet! ;D So of course, after deciding on the color I'd want, and which model, I started browsing through the attachments you can get. Oh my word! What an assortment! But one in particular caught my eye: pasta cutter.
You see, I have an Italian cookbook magazine that I got, oh, I'd say eight years ago or so. In it it had a recipe for pasta. It didn't even seem like it'd be crazy to make, except for the fact that you'd have to roll out the dough, and I dread rolling things out. Rolling dough out creates a huge mess for me to clean (now you may understand why I liked the idea of an attachment that'd do it all for me!), and as I hated the idea of having to clean the dishes from making the dough AND a surface, it never got made.
Fast forward eight years, and not only am I already forking over an absurd amount of money for a mixer(alright, it was a refurbished one on sale through the company, so it was a steal, but for the price and it's only a mixer...still stings), but now I'm dreaming about the pasta attachments, which themselves are a pretty penny. "I cook a lot of pasta in this house," I think to myself. "I oughta get those so that we can save money from not having to buy pasta noodles." But I worried. What if I didn't like the taste of fresh pasta? I know tons of people online said it tastes amazing, way better than store bought, and even those who weren't as thrilled their worst comment was just that it tastes the same as the stores, so that's not bad. But just like the line I'd heard about "everything tastes better from the garden, especially lettuce," and I was the only one who disliked the lettuce from my garden, I wondered if I'd be different from all these reviewers. Maybe I'd not hate it(as I think a decent recipe for pasta you really couldn't), but maybe I'd not prefer it. So, before I put up more money for my KitchenAid dreams, I decided to make some pasta by hand, cutting and all, before I would buy the pasta attachments.
Well my friends, let's say I wasn't disappointed! The noodles turned out wonderfully, and tasted pretty good. I will admit, to me they kinda just taste like store bought but a bit better, but since the first time I've made it we've had guests over and they've said you can totally taste the difference. So, without further adieu, here's my pasta recipe I found! Found on the recipe site, Allrecipes.com, this is called "Basic Pasta", and the original recipe can be found on this page here. It's super easy, and by using a suggestion by one of the reviewers on that site, it only has five ingredients. So you can do it! If any of ya'll do try it, I'd love to hear back from you as to what you think! :)
Homemade Pasta Noodles
1 egg, beaten
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon olive oil
-When kneading, really do it for 3-4 minutes. What you're looking for is for it to be a bit more supple, more stretchy. I hit the three minute mark the first time and was thinking, "well, not getting stretchy like people said it should. But I am at the three minute mark...maybe I'll stop." But I decided to keep going anyway. Not even a minute later the difference happened. So keep it up! You should definitely hit that point before five minutes is up. Now again, it should be more stretchy. I'm not saying it'll be easy to stretch it, it'll just a little bit easier to work with that the previous minutes.
-If you lightly roll the dough up lengthwise when you're about to cut it, it will be easier to cut as you're not cutting it strip by strip, but just having to make one little cut per strip as you're cutting them similar to a how you cut up cinnamon roll dough. That's what I did! :)
-In the picture above, you can see Saran wrap peaking out from under the noodles. I once saw a suggestion you use Saran wrap in-between noodle layers so as to keep them from sticking together. It worked really well.
Instructions
1.In a medium
sized bowl, combine flour and salt. Make a well in the flour, add the
slightly beaten egg, and mix. Mixture should form a stiff dough. Now add the water and oil.
2.On a lightly
floured surface, knead dough for about 3 to 4 minutes.
3.Put dough back into the bowl, and let it rest for about 45 minutes (this lets the gluten relax, making it easier to roll out when the time comes).
4.With a pasta
machine or by hand roll dough out to desired thinness. Use machine or
knife to cut into strips of desired width.
As for how much this makes, although it doesn't sound like it'd make a ton, here's how much pasta we had after I cooked it:
It works out to about two generous sized adult portions. :)
More photos of pasta once I bought the Kitchenaid pasta roller attachments:
And no, it's not cooked in this pic. This is the real deal, homemade pasta at its finest. Looking just like real spaghetti noodles like you'd get at the store! I LOVE the KitchenAid pasta attachments! They make amazing awesome shaped noodles. :) So I showed you what the alfredo pasta noodles looked like once done up for a dish, now here's a delish tasting and delish looking picture of the meal the spaghetti noodles became:
Yep, the pic at the beginning of this post was it! My friends, that is homemade spaghetti noodles covered in homemade tomato sauce made with the tomatoes from my garden(simmered for about EIGHT hours), and the tomatoes on the bread were roasted by me, and ALSO from my garden! Shoot, if I'da made the bread the whole meal would have been from scratch! All right, all right, I would have still had to have grown the herbs, made the cheese....but you know what I mean! ;)
Well, hope ya'll enjoy the pics and I wish you the best in trying out this recipe or some of the other ones I'll be posting! Happy cooking!
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