Making Pasta

This week I decided to try my hand at making homemade pasta.  I've always wanted to try this, and  I finally gave it a whirl.  The whole experience reminded me of a quote one of my college professors would say often, "Make your mistakes with enthusiasm!" 

The end result was just shy of inedible, but I learned a lot along the way.  And I think there will be a "next time."  Just a time in the unforseen future. 

The pasta making event started off great.  I brought the happiest little sous chef into the kitchen with me.  Looking at that face even now makes me break out into a huge smile. 

Next, I gathered my ingredients:  flour, eggs, salt.  Simple.  Mix the flour and salt together, then make a volcano shaped well on your kitchen counter (or as I will do next time, in a large mixing bowl).

Next, drop your eggs into the hole in the center of your flour volcano.  At this point, I realized that I really should have used a mixing bowl because the eggs broke through the wall of flour and started spilling out onto the counter.  I quickly used my hands to herd the rogue eggs back into the flour, then started mixing like a mad woman.  Soon, I had a round ball of dough.

Then I started the kneading process.  I looked at several different recipes before I started and the kneading time varied quite a bit.  Most recipes suggested 5 to 10 minutes of kneading, but a few said 15 minutes and one even said 20.  I ended up kneading for 5 minutes when I decided that the dough was elastic enough.  This is where I think I went wrong.  Overkneading pasta dough can make it quite rubbery.  Next time I will pay closer attention to this stage of the game.  After kneading for awhile, I let the dough rest for an hour.

And while it rested, I did this......

Tangent:  The laundry never stops around here.  If it does, it is like a train derailment and we end up digging jeans or socks out of the dirty clothes hamper.  And keep in mind I wear a pair of jeans about five times before tossing it into the hamper. 

After an hour, I started to roll out the dough.  I noticed right away that it was super elastic and quite hard to roll out.  I am not a patient dough-roller-outer, so I gave up as soon as I had a fairly thin circle.  It probably could have been thinner and definitely more even.

Then the cutting began.  I had already decided that I didn't care how "pretty" my pasta looked.  I just wanted long strips that sort of resembled spaghetti or linguini or something like that.  I do not have a steady hand, so my strips were pretty uneven.  At this point, I just wanted to be finished, so I didn't care.  I am learning that I need more patience when making something from scratch!

Once all the strips were cut, I laid them out to dry on my make-shift pasta drier:  two wooden spoons balanced between two chairs.  My sweet Hannah decided to stand like Vanna White next to our drying pasta. 

Finally after two more hours, I decided to start cooking.  I made a new recipe from my most recent Real Simple magazine:  Spaghetti with Turkey Meatballs.  Here is my lump of pasta waiting to go in some boiling, salted water.  My turkey meatballs were underway as well. 

As a backup plan, I also boiled some store bought linguine.  As you will see later, it's a good thing I did.

During the cooking process, I noticed that the pasta was puffing up way too thick.  But I was still holding out hope that taste would win out over presentation.  After I drained off the water, I took a bite.  And I have to say that it was not good.  The taste wasn't so bad, but the texture was horrible.  I think if you put a blindfold over my eyes, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a rubber band and a piece of my pasta.  Mike agreed.  Oh well.  Thankfully I had made the extra linguine, and the meal actually turned out pretty tasty!

But the pan of homemade pasta I had worked so hard on.....it ended up here:

Better luck next time!