Fresh Pasta

Being pregnant, I wasn't in the mood to use the Kitchen aid pasta attachments my parents got me for Christmas. So, this recipe was delayed until after Abby was born. This was the first time (to my knowledge) that I have ever tasted fresh pasta. It is SOO yummy! I will be making this over and over again. Goodbye dried supermarket pasta!

I wanted to do as much of this by hand the first time. So I did all of the mixing myself. I've heard that some people use food processors. I can offer no advice on that. So if you do, let me know how it turns out! To start, make a well in 2 cups of flour. To this, add 1 tsp. salt. Now comes the messy part. In the well, add 3 eggs. From here, start to incorporate the flour into the eggs. Work slowly at first, or else you will have an eggy mess all over your counter tops. Continue to add in more flour until you have a ball. Knead the dough for a few minutes, adding a drop or two of water if gets too dry (or flour if it gets too wet).

Divide the dough into three pieces. Take one piece and run it through your pasta roller at its thickest setting. Repeat. Run the pasta through each setting of your roller twice until you get to the desired thickness. If the dough tears, ball it up and start over. Lay the sheet of pasta on a floured surface and continue with the next piece. Do this until all of your pasta is rolled out.

At this point you want to cut your pasta to whatever shape you want. I wanted spaghetti, so I ran my sheets through the spaghetti cutter. But, you can make any shape using a machine or by hand. After your pasta is cut, you can either hang it to dry or use it immediately. Remember, fresh pasta cooks very quickly! It only took about 1.5 minutes to cook my spaghetti.

Enjoy!!