- Hey, I'm John Kanell.
And today on Preppy Kitchen,
I'm giving you all my tips and tricks
to making the best fresh pasta dough.
So let's get started.
First off, I need two cups or 240 grams of flour.
But what kind of flour, you might be wondering?
So this is all-purpose flour.
This is double zero flour.
And a lot of times you might be hearing,
"Oh, double zero flour is the way to go,"
and wondering why and what is double zero flour?
Double zero flour, it just has a very fine mill,
so it's powdery soft.
This is great for giving you really loose silky pasta.
By the way, you wanna dump the flour
right onto your clean counter.
Grab a measuring cup.
We're gonna make a little well in the middle,
actually a nice sized well, to be honest.
Should have some good walls and look like a pasta volcano.
If you're making pasta dough,
you can scale this recipe up almost as much as you want.
You can have like a giant mountain of flour
and a mountain of eggs.
It just takes more skill to mix it all together,
divide it, and everything else,
so feel free to double, triple,
or even quadruple this recipe.
And later on in the video, we'll talk about storage.
Into my well, I'm adding three eggs.
If you wanted to,
you could beat them up a little bit beforehand,
but we're gonna do all the mixing on the counter today.
Half a teaspoon of salt goes right over the eggs.
I'm also adding a tablespoon of olive oil.
There are various traditional types of pasta
that you could make.
Some just have flour and water.
Some have tons of egg yolks mixed in.
And then you'd go to the fancy places
with all the different flavorings.
I used to like having like squid ink pasta,
'cause it looks so dramatic.
Now we're gonna do the fun part,
and this is where it could get messy.
You really should have a nice well
in the middle of your flour mound.
Grab a fork and start beating it up.
As you mix the eggs, you're drawing in some of the flour.
You can also start scraping in some of the flour
just like this and mix, mix, mix.
Eventually you're gonna have more and more flour
brought into the eggs and it'll become a delicious dough.
Fresh pasta dough is so good.
You can use it to make any kind of noodle.
You could make sheets for your lasagna or homemade ravioli.
I'm actually doing this video by popular request.
Some of you really wanted a video tutorial
on how to make pasta dough, so I'm here for that.
At a certain point,
there's like no way to maintain your well,
so I have a bench scraper here.
This is gonna be really handy for mixing things up,
but you can also use your hands.
Now, even though my well is destroyed,
the dough is so thick, it's not oozing out.
And at this point, I'm gonna switch to my bench scraper.
So fold it in just like that.
And by the way, this is not gonna look amazing right away.
It's gonna take some time and patience.
Then all that gluten we've developed from the kneading,
really needs to rest,
so it'll take half an hour at least of rest time
for it to become pliable and silky.
If you're making your pasta
and it looks a little bit wet right now, it's too sticky,
you can add in up to a quarter cup of flour,
just knead it in, like a table spoon at a time.
These eggs are large eggs
but I swear whoever is categorizing egg sizes
is like just straight tripping sometimes.
I'll buy extra large eggs
and they look like little quail eggs,
like what's going on?
My point is, by the way,
that if the eggs are a little bit larger,
you're gonna add more liquid in and you need more flour.
So in this recipe, I'm saying two cups
to two and a quarter, kind of depends on your eggs.
I've switched over to hand kneading.
And because I used the bench scraper,
my hands are like fairly clean.
If you did this by hand, they'd be like a wreck.
If you're wondering why some recipes call for semolina
and also like why they say bronze-cut,
a lot of these packages,
bronze cutters will give you a rougher cut
and it is my understanding
that that gives you more craggy places
for the sauce to rest.
And the same thing goes with the semolina flour.
It's gonna give you a coarser pasta
that really holds its shape well
and has all those nooks and crannies
that your sauce can really find a place to rest in.
So I'm kneading this right now
and you can see the pasta dough
is kind of breaking as I knead it.
The gluten has not been developed yet,
so it's actually just pulling away.
Once the gluten's developed
it'll have a stretchy elastic, silkier texture to it.
You're gonna be kneading this for 10 to 15 minutes.
It might sound like a long time
but really think of it as your kitchen meditation.
It's actually really relaxing.
It's back and forth.
I like to fold the dough over slightly and press forward.
Slight press forward, slight press forward.
And you just keep doing that,
you'll notice the change in the dough.
If it looks like at all wet,
remember you can add up to a quarter cup of flour,
a little bit at a time.
And if it looks really dry,
hmm, you might have mismeasured your flour.
But as the liquid is absorbed into the flour,
it should become nice and silky.
If it just doesn't,
you might have added a little bit too much flour.
In that case,
I would just add in like a teaspoon of olive oil,
just to soften it up and knead that in.
And yes, all these things have happened to me in the past,
so I'm telling you from personal experience.
(bright music)
I'm getting closer on my knead.
You can see this looks nice and smooth,
and let's see how it pulls.
It's stretchier.
It's not really gonna be like a bread dough
where it has that wonderful pull
because that's a much softer, looser dough.
Pasta is like pretty firm,
but you will see it's smooth,
it'll bounce and it can stretch a bit.
My internal timer has gone off.
I think this has been kneaded enough.
It looks nice and smooth.
And if I use my finger, give it a poke,
it bounces back.
So it has some elasticity, but it's too active right now.
It needs to relax and just chill out.
So we need one to three hours on the countertop.
You can wrap it in plastic
or I have these milli wraps, they're pieces of fabric
that are like coated in beeswax.
They're reusable and they're great.
You could also refrigerate this overnight
if you wanted to come back to it the next day.
So, rest time and we are back.
While my all-purpose version rests,
I'm gonna make my batch of double zero pasta dough.
We'll see if we can tell the difference.
This kneads up just like before,
but ooh, it feels much silkier.
Nice.
This feels so much nicer.
I've never made them back to back before
and appreciated just how much like more supple it is.
Ooh.
Wrap it up, it also gets a rest
and then I'll show you how to roll it out.
My pasta dough's rested.
I'm grabbing my rolling attachment for my KitchenAid mixer.
You can definitely use a hand crank pasta maker too
and even a rolling pin to do this.
Screw that on nice and tight.
I'm cutting my pasta dough into four pieces
to make it more manageable.
And I have some flour at hand.
You can use the flour that you made the pasta with
or you can also use semolina flour.
I'm gonna pat this just into a square shape.
The pasta just has to be thin enough
that I can pass it through my very first setting,
which is a one.
On low, we're gonna pass this through once.
(machine whirring)
Twice.
And even a third time.
If you have one of those big hand crankers,
you can turn the pasta each time
but this only has like eight inches for an opening.
Okay, take your pasta and I'm gonna fold it in thirds.
And now we're gonna pass it through a couple more times.
There we go.
This will give your pasta a little bit more structure.
Folding is a bit of an optional step though.
I've definitely made pasta with no folds.
It turns out just fine.
Now I'm reducing the thickness of the pasta.
So go one number at a time
and pass it through at least twice.
I'm gonna add just the slightest sprinkle of flour.
It's really minimal
and just so nothing catches in the rollers.
If it starts catching, or if you turn the dial too far
and you jump a few numbers,
it's gonna have like these stretch marks
and just not be as silky and supple as you see right here.
And it's also important to support your pasta evenly.
So don't pull at it from one point,
give it the support of the back of your hand.
And don't tug at it, just let it go through.
And at this point,
when you get to number six, seven and eight,
you do not want any wrinkles.
So if your pasta starts wrinkling,
(laughing) don't let it do that.
If this feels unmanageable and super long,
it's because it is.
It doesn't have to be this long.
You can cut it into lengths of your choosing,
it's however long you want your pasta to be.
I got to number seven.
That's a great thickness for your pasta,
so you can stop there.
If you want it ultra thin,
go to the last setting, number eight.
Okay.
Just like that, your pasta's done.
These large sheets of pasta are perfect for making ravioli,
you can use them for lasagna and several other things.
But if you want to cut them with your machine,
slap a fettuccine attachment on
and you're just gonna feed it through.
It's a good idea to add some flour to both sides
so you can be sure that nothing sticks,
but I have to tell you, this is so satisfying to watch.
It's like my favorite part.
Perfect pasta noodles, ready to cook.
But if you don't have a pasta roller,
grab a rolling pin, little bit of flour for your counter,
and just get to work.
It's as easy as rolling any dough out.
And actually, pasta dough is pretty forgiving
because it's a little bit more dense than your normal dough.
This time I am not gonna be doing the envelope method.
What you do wanna see is a floured surface on both sides
so nothing sticks,
'cause the pasta has to be able to move as you spread it.
And I'm not cheating per se,
but I am using the double zero pasta dough
because it is noticeably silkier and looser
so it really rolls out easily.
So if you don't have a pasta machine
but you want to make some pasta at home,
double zero flour is gonna make it a little bit easier.
I'm gonna show you how to cut the pasta,
but I'm not cutting on my marble countertops,
they're too delicate.
So a little bit more flour and fold this over,
so flour as you go.
You can cut your pasta to any width you'd like.
Gonna go for a slightly thicker noodle,
just give it a cut.
One thing I will say, it's important to unfold your pasta.
Don't leave it all crinkled up,
'cause it will dry and kinda like stick together.
If you're making a pasta,
chances are you're not gonna cook it all right now,
or you might, but if you don't want to,
you can freeze this for later.
That's why we're gonna form a pasta nest.
So we're gonna take some fingers
and just twirl it into a nest.
And now this can get frozen on a sheet of parchment paper
and then plopped into an airtight container
and kept frozen for about a month.
Then just put it right into your boiling water
and cook from frozen.
Just for fun,
I wanted to see if I could make a penne type pasta.
None of us have an extruder at home,
but some of you might have a gnocchi block.
So one square of pasta right on the block
little rolling pin,
and you're just going to press and roll it together.
And it forms a penne like tube of pasta.
This is a little bit large, but it's kind of up to you.
Nice.
And the ridges will help sauce and delicious things
hang onto your pasta.
So if you wanted to make a penne style pasta,
you can do it with your block.
This is called, hm,
garganelli. (chuckles)
I did not take Italian, so forgive me.
So obviously this is a labor of love,
but it's actually really fun.
So if you wanted a project to keep your kids busy,
or if you have a rainy day,
I would suggest popping this out,
making the most amazing handcrafted meal ever.
When you're ready to cook your pasta,
bring a large pot of water to a boil.
Salt well.
Very important.
And then cook for three, four, even five minutes,
depending on the thickness,
until it is tender and delicious.
My pasta's cooked.
I've tried both and I have to tell you,
they're both so good.
The double zero flour is ever so slightly silkier.
The main difference is it's so much easier to work with,
especially if you're rolling it out by hand.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video, check out my pasta playlist.