Homemade Pasta Recipe With A Rolling Pin

The Recipe – Homemade Pasta with a Rolling Pin

How To Make Authentic Italian Fresh Pasta By Hand

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Ingredients

Serves 2

Notes:

• This recipe only makes enough dough for 2 servings. You could double the ingredients to serve 4 but you’d have to roll the dough in 2 batches with a normal size rolling pin. Therefore, I’d recommend starting out with a small serving for 2 people.
• With a large rolling pin (a mattarello) you could double the recipe and roll it all out in one batch.

With 00 flour (recommended):

Tip: You can click on the links to check out the ingredients on Amazon.

• Eggs (medium free range) – 2
• Flour (00) – 150g

Note: Caputo 00 pizza flour is probably the most widely available proffessional grade Italian 00 flours. It’s what I tend to use as it makes incredible pizza and pasta dough.

My chef’s bag of Caputo 00 flour – click here to check if it’s available on Amazon

Method

There are quite a few stes to this so I’ve broken it into the following sections:

1. Mixing The Pasta Dough
2. Kneading The Pasta Dough
3. Shaping The Pasta Dough
4. Rolling Out The Pasta Dough (Rullo)
5. Stretching the centre of the dough (Bordo)
6. Cutting The Pasta
7. Cooking The Pasta

Now let’s get into it with the first step – combining the ingredients!

1. Mixing The Pasta Dough

Notes:

• Eggs (cracked) weigh different amounts so I’ve provided you with a method of getting the correct amount of flour by weighing your eggs.
• I realise that the traditional method is to mix on the bench, without a bowl. However, for beginners, I recommend using a bowl and weighing your ingredients, as I have described in the method below.
  

  This traditional method is tricky at first but you could always try it once you become confident

1. Start by cracking 2 eggs into a large bowl (we’ll be using the yolks and the whites).
   
2. Use digital weighing scales to weigh the contents of the eggs. This will allow us to calculate the exact amount of flour required.
   

   For beginners, I highly recommend weighing the egg. In fact, I still do it to this day.

3. Divide the weight of egg by 0.56. This will give you the exact weight of 00 flour needed.
   Note:
   – This amount is exact if using Caputo 00 (the flour I use) or a similar, high quality 00 flour. If you’re using a different type of flour, you typically shouldn’t need to use as much.
   – For bread flour or plain flour, divide your weight of egg by 0.6 instead of 0.56. It should work out OK but I’d definitely recommend getting some 00 flour for the best results.
4. In a seperate bowl, weight out 200g flour (or whatever amount you calculated in step 3).
   
5. With a fork, whisk your eggs together to form one whole liquid.
   
6. Add about half of your flour to the egg and whisk again with the fork. This is starting to form the dough but it should still be runny at this stage.
   
7. Add about half of the remaining flour and whisk again with the fork. The mixture should start becomming thicker now, gradually forming a dough.
   
8. Next, turn your dough out onto the side and add almost all of the rest of your weighed out flour. Leave just a tablespoon or so of flour in the bowl in case you don’t need it (you probably will).
9. To clean dough off your fork, you can sprinkle a pinch of flour onto it and use your hands to drag it off.
   

   Don’t worry about the state of your dough yet, it’ll probably be a bit of a mess!

10. To clean your hands, you can grab a pinch of flour and rub your hands together.
11. Don’t worry about the clumps of dough that come off your fork and hands, these will mix into the dough.
12. Now is a good time to use your dough scraper if you have one. By cutting the dough several times with it, the dough comes together easily. You could also use a knife instead.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a dough scraper, just get stuck in and mix with your hands. You could try a knife too, if you’re not worried about your worktop or chopping board.

2. Kneading The Pasta Dough

As with bread dough, kneading helps to combine the ingredients and form the gluten network. This makes the pasta dough strong and stretchy, ready for rolling out. The only difference is that pasta dough is usually tougher to knead than bread dough, don’t be afraid to put your weight into into it!

1. For right handed people, hold the nearest side of the dough down with your left hand fingers. With the heel of your right hand, press down and stretch the dough away from you.
   
   

   If you’ve made bread before, kneading pasta is pretty much the same!

2. Repeat this step several times until the dough comes together. We’re looking for an even mixture of the egg and flour with a nice amount of stretchiness to the dough.
3. If the dough becomes sticky, don’t worry just add a little sprinkle of flour from the bowl we weighed out at the start (if there’s any left). Typically, you shouldn’t need to use more flour than we weighed out at the start but it’s possible you may need a pinch or two extra.
   

   If your dough gets sticky like this, just add a pinch of flour. We don’t want a sticky dough as it would be difficult to roll out.

4. In total, you should probably knead the dough for around 3 to 5 minutes.
5. If the dough becomes tough and difficult to knead, this is usually a good indication that it’s been kneaded enough. (Or you should at least rest it before doing any more kneading.)
6. Once kneaded, rest the dough for at least 15 minutes (but up to an hour). Place an upturned bowl over the dough to prevent ir from drying out.

3. Shaping The Pasta Dough

Shaping the pasta into a nice ball is actually quite important. If the pasta is not shaped properly it will be difficult to roll out and it may develop creases or even tear.

1. We can give the dough another quick knead before shaping. The dough should be much softer and easier to work with now it has rested.
2. For the shaping, perform a single gentle kneading action with your right hand (trying not to stretch the dough) and fold the dough back on itself. Then rotate the dough by 1/4 (without turning the dough over) with your left hand and repeat.
   

   From top left to bottom right – press, fold, and turn. Repeat this a few times until you have something resembling the dough in the bottom right – almost round.

3. To round the dough off, cup the base of the dough with both hands and perform a twisting motion (anticlockwise for righties).
4. Repeat step 3 until you have a nice ball. With practice the shaping shouldn’t take long at all, maybe just 30 seconds or so.
   

   We’re looking for a beautifully smooth dough ball which should make the rolling out easier.

5. Leave the dough to rest again (covered) for at least 30 minutes but up to a few hours if you like. This helps the dough to be as relaxed as possible when we come to roll it out. I just leave it on the counter and cover it with an upturned bowl.

4. Rolling Out The Pasta Dough (Rullo)

Rolling out the dough is known as “rullo” in Italian. To start with, it’s pretty much like rolling a cake mix or anything else. It does get trickier as the pasta sheet gets larger but don’t worry, all will be explained below.

1. Use a dough scraper (or a spatular etc) to free the rested dough from the counter.
   
   

   Dough scrapers really are handy!

2. Flour underneath the dough and then sprinkle flour on the top of the dough.
   
3. Pick the dough up with both hands and gently form it into a flat disk ready for rolling out. Make sure the dough is completely covered with flour on both sides.
   
4. Roll the dough gently with your rolling pin travelling directly away from you. Ideally, you should try to roll the dough with your hands outside of the dough (on the edge of the rolling pin). This helps the dough to stretch out more evenly. This move is known as “rullo” in Italian which just means to roll.
5. You can roll the dough about 4 or 5 times before you need to turn it. Be careful not to press too hard when rolling or to roll too many times – this could lead to creases in the dough.
   
6. Turn the dough by 1/4 – you should able to simply spin it with your hand the first few times. Due to the flour, the dough shouldn’t stick to the surface initially. Also, don’t worry about turning the dough over to being with. We’ll do that when all the excess flour has gone.
7. To start with, try to keep the dough circular by rotating it by 1/4 regularly.
8. Once the dough gets almost as wide as the rolling pin, we can roll the dough out in the same direction (instead of trying to keep it round). This creates a long and thin sheet of dough that won’t become too wide for the rolling pin.
9. Once the dough gets large and sticky, we turn the dough by using a technique where we wrap the dough around the rolling pin. This makes turning the dough easy, even as the dough gets very large. Here’s the technique explained below:
   – Place your rolling pin close to the edge the top of the dough at the top
   – Flip the edge of the dough over the rolling pin so that the dough just touches itself
   – Use your thumb to gently hold the dough as you roll the pin back towards yourself
   

   This is known as “cinching” the pasta dough

   – The dough should effortlessly wrap around the pin as you roll it back towards yourself.
   

   – Lift the dough off the counter – this should be easy now the dough is wrapped around the rolling pin

   

   Tip: with the dough lifted off the counter (and holding the rolling pin in your left hand), use your right hand to sweep any flour to one side. From this point onwards, we want a clean worktop as any flour will make stretching harder and may cause the dough to dry up.

   – Now you can replace the dough on it’s other side. To unravel the dough, simply rotate the rolling pin away from you whilst moving it towards yourself.

10. Roll the dough as usual before flipping it over using the same technique. Use that technique from now onwards.
11. Once the dough gets long enough (maybe 0.5m/20 inches), hang half of it over the edge. The weight of the dough hanging off helps to stretch it even thinner. Also, the added benefit is that you won’t need a huge worktop to roll it out!
    Here’s the technique explained below:
    – Roll the dough around the pin as normal, but unfurl it with half of it hanging off the edge
    – Before rolling the dough out, you should “degass” it (this needs to be done each time now since our pasta is so thin). Degassing is as simple as rolling your pin without any pressure over the top half of the dough, just once. This removes any air underneath the pasta, flattening it to the worktop, and ensuring the dough doesn’t crease or tear when rolling it out.
    – You can then roll the top half with gentle pressure (as normal) before flipping the dough to repeat.
    
12. Keep repeating step 11 until the pasta is very thin – so thin you can see through it in fact! Getting the thickness right is key to great pasta.
    

    If you look closely, you should be able to see the worktop through the pasta!

13. To check the thickness of the pasta, fold a sheet of A4 paper (crisply) 4 times. Your pasta should be the same thickness as this or even a little thinner!
    

    This method will give you a good guide for Pappardelle. (For Tagliatelle you’d need to go to about 1/2 to 1/3 of this thickness!)

14. Once the dough has been rolled to the desired thickness, you can cut the dough in half, unless you have a lot of space on your worktop.
    
    

    Cutting the dough ion half makes it a lot more manageable!

15. Then, sprinkle flour all over the top of your dough and allow it to dry out (on the worktop uncovered) for around 15 minutes. This is known as “curing” as it sets the pasta, preventing it from sticking or stretching during cutting and cooking.
    

    Sprinkle a decent amount of flour on both pieces of dough and then rub it in a little with your hand.

16. After 15 minutes, flip the pasta over, flour the other side and allow it cure for 15 minutes also.

5. Stretching the centre of the dough (Bordo)

There is a stretching move you can perform, known as “bordo” in Italian. Bordo stretches the middle of the pasta sheet, ensuring that the centre is as thin as the edges.

For beginners, you can miss this step out but once you get more confident I highly recommend using it. I would particularly recommend using it if you have a mattarello (a very long rolling pin).

If you’re not going to be using this technique just be aware that the centre of your dough will tend to be thicker than the edges. For this reason, I recommend focusing on rolling the centre of the dough as thinly as possible if this technique is not used. You should still be able to get a fairly even thickness to your pasta as long as you don’t roll the edges too thin.

The bordo method is performed whilst you have the dough wrapped around the pin, in the process of turning it. It is done when the dough is large enough to hang half over the counter.

Bordo can be performed as follows:

1. Once the dough is fairly large, position it so that half of the dough is hanging over the counter.
2. Roll (rullo) out the top of the dough as usual (remembering to degass first).
3. Then, flip the top portion of the dough over the rolling pin and secure it with the thumb as usual (cinching).
4. This time, roll the dough towards you by a couple of turns or so (not all the way), enough for the dough to grip the rolling pin.
5. Now you can stretch the dough by lifting the rolling pin slightly off the bench (just enough to support the weight of it) and then gently pushing the pin away from you (only by say an inch or so).
   
   

   You should feel a slight stretch as the the weight of dough hanging over the edge holds the pasta in place at the edge of the worktop.

6. Then, roll the dough back towards yourself by a turn or two and repeat the stretch. If you watch the pasta closely, you should be able to see where it stretches. With practice you can purposely stretch any thick parts of the dough.
   
   

   If you watch closely, the pasta should stretchy somewhere near the edge of the worktop.

7. You can then gently roll the pin all the way away from you to release the pasta from the rolling pin. The pasta should now be in roughly the same place as it was at the start of step 1.
8. Now, gently roll the pasta as normal (rullo), evening out the stretches that you’ve just created (remembering to degass first).
9. Then roll the dough up, turn it over, and repeat this technique on the other side (degassing and rolling out the dough first as usual).

Tip: Be sure not to push down on the dough during this stretch. We don’t want the dough to stick to itself, we simply want to stretch the centre of the dough a little. Also, perform the steps quickly to prevent the dough from sticking to itself on the rolling pin. If you take too long, the dough may not release from the rolling pin.

6. Cutting The Pasta

There are many different ways of cutting pasta. I’m going to explain to you what I think is the easiest method. 

Notes:

• For beginners, I recommend using plenty of flour. As you get more experienced you can use less flour. 
• Flour prevents sticking  – if your dough sticks during cutting or cooking it could very well end up ruined!
• Cut and seperate the strands from one sheet of pasta before moving onto the other (if you have 2 or 3 sheets). This further reduces the chances of your pasta sticking.

1. After curing, generously sprinkle flour on both sheets of dough again and gently rub it all over using your hand. Do this to both sides of both pieces of dough to prevents sticking during cutting (and cooking).
2. Take one sheet of dough and position it so that the narrow end is away from you.
   
   

   Narrow end to the top, wide end at the bottom.

3. Starting at the top of your dough, fold it over by about 1 inch.
   
   

   Start at the narrow end (the top).

4. Repeat step 3 all the way down, folding the pasta over on itself. Be sure to leave a little bit unfolded at the end (maybe an inch).
   

   The bit left unfolded at the bottom is crucial, you’ll soon see why!

5. With a sharp knife, slice your dough to the width of pasta strips that you like (about 1 inch for Papadelle). Continue along the pasta until it has all been sliced.
   

   Cut the pasta into roughly 1 inch strips (or whatever you like).

6. Now, with your left hand (for right handers) gently pick up a few strands of pasta.
   

   There is a bit of knack to this but it’s actually quite easy.

7. Now, with your right hand, grab the strands by the little tip we left sticking out.
   
   

   Grab these strips (with your opposite hand) by the unfolded part.

8. Shake the pasta to let it unravel and if needed, use your left hand to help.
   

   Now we have strands of beautiful homemade pasta!

9. Unravel the rest of your pasta by repeating the steps above.
10. Sprinkle your pasta with plenty of flour and give it a light mix with your hands to prevent the pasta from sticking.
    
11. Now repeat these steps with your other pasta sheet. Doing one sheet at a time prevents sticking.
12. You can cook the pasta straight away or leave it on the side (or in a bowl) until you’re ready. It will be fine left uncovered for up to 30 minutes or so.
13. If you don’t want to use the pasta right away, seal it in an airtight container or cover it with a bowl (or use plastic wrap etc).
14. The pasta really needs to be used within a few hours, fresh egg pasta doesnt last long. If needs be, you can put the sealed container into the fridge where the pasta should keep for up to 6 hours.
    

    The beauty of homemade pasta is just how fresh it is!

7. Cooking The Pasta

1. Bring a large pan of well seasoned water to a vigerous boil. Since the pasta cooks so quickly, you need more salt than you think. As a guide, I recommend about 1 tablespoon per 2 litres/2 quarts of water.
   
   

   Don’t worry, not all of the salt will end up in the pasta! Most of it will remain in the water. Here, I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons in 3 litres/3 quarts of water.

2. Once the water has started boiling, give it a quick stir (to dissolve the salt) and add your pasta, giving it a gentle stir with a fork.
3. Time it with your watch (or stopwatch, phone etc). The pasta could be ready in as little as 90 seconds depending on the thickness of your pasta.
4. Keep the pan on a high heat but gradually reduce it if it looks like it’s about to boil over.
5. Gently stir the pasta every 30 seconds or so with your fork – we don’t want the pasta to stick to the pan.
   
6. Remove one strand of pasta to taste it after around 90 seconds.
7. In my experience, the pasta is probably ready at around 2 minutes. It overcooks very quickly so keep checking it and remove it from the heat as soon as it’s ready.
8. Quickly remove your pasta using a spider or some tongs. You can add the pasta to a colander or something to keep it for a short while if needed.
   
9. The best thing to do is to add the pasta straight to your homemade sauce. Don’t worry about draining it, pasta water is your friend!
   

   I just use tongs to transfer the pasta into the sauce – a little pasta water coming along for the ride is fine.

10. Also, don’t disgard the pot of pasta water, a ladel or so of it can be added to your sauce to create a creamier texture. The starch in pasta water is like a magic ingredient for your homemade sauces!
11. Combine your pasta and sauce by tossing it in the pan and/or using a pair of tongs.
    
12. Dish up your pasta (using a pair on tongs) and finish it off with a grating of cheese (parmesan/pecorino) and a drizzle olive oil (extra virgin) if you like.
13. Enjoy your incredible homemade pasta!
    
    

    There’s nothing quite like homemade pasta!

    

Keep reading for my final thoughts and then the comments below. Feel free to leave me a question and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.