(calm music)
- Hi, I'm going to demonstrate how to make fresh pasta.
With me is Dr Han Wen, Professor of Food and Beverage
at the University of North Texas.
- Yeah, it's great to be here and learn
how to make pasta with Chef Duryea.
- Thank you so much.
So, really simple, the ingredients are
flour, eggs, a little salt, a little olive oil,
but you don't really even need the olive oil.
So, let's get started.
We start with the flour.
It's about two cups of all purpose flour, unbleached.
And then I make a well,
and add my eggs.
- Can you add the oil and the salt?
- The oil.
And beside the center?
- [Jodi] Perfect.
And then, use a fork and you start to beat the eggs,
breaking the yolks,
and slowly working the flour into it.
And then as it starts to form a dough
it's still pretty not together yet,
but I'm going to turn it onto the table.
And now the fun begins, we get to start kneading.
So, the thing about fresh pasta and wheat flour is
there's a protein in it called, two proteins,
and they make up something called gluten,
and gluten is what gives wheat pasta its unique texture.
And so this process here, the kneading
as gluten absorbs the moisture from the eggs,
it starts to stretch.
Wanna try kneading?
- Oh, yeah, sure.
Like this?
Do I need to add flour?
Do we put any water in the dough?
- If it feels a little dry, I might add
a little bit of water, or we may not need all the flour
in it, so, you want a pretty stiff dough, but you don't
want it necessarily so hard you can't manipulate it.
Yeah, you're doing beautifully.
And so, this takes some time, this is,
usually about 10 minutes.
So it seems endless.
(both laugh)
- So how can we know, like, whether
it is ready for the next step?
- So what you're looking for is it to feel,
it should get really smooth.
I'll put this on the side,
we may not need all of that.
All this should be absorbed,
and the dough should become nice and smooth and stretchy.
So we got a little ways to go.
And...
But you can feel the difference already, right,
as you were working with it, it started to change in texture
- [Han] Is there any technique you can use?
- [Jodi] This, the more you push on it the faster it goes.
So this is one of those things
you do not have to be delicate with.
- [Han] Just push it hard.
- [Jodi] Push it hard.
Wanna try?
- [Han] Okay.
Oh, now I can feel the difference.
- [Jodi] Right, yeah, it's really
starting to smooth out inside.
- [Han] I feel it like solid together, yeah.
- [Jodi] It's nice to have someone to
do it with, so you can trade off.
(both laugh)
So you want it, it should be squeezeable,
but it shouldn't feel sticky.
So you can see it's really changing in how it looks.
- [Han] And even the color changed.
- Yes, the egg yolks really start to come through.
So it's almost getting there, but you can see
how it breaks apart, so not ready.
- [Han] Not ready.
- [Jodi] Not ready.
So, you can see, it feels smooth
to my hands, and when I stretch on it,
oh, nope, not ready yet.
Faked me out.
So you see, now it's stretchy, doesn't break apart.
Smooth, and you feel the dough, it feels really smooth.
- [Han] Oh yes.
- Soft and smooth.
And so that's what you're looking for.
Once you get to that point you want to wrap it in
some plastic, and let it rest 30 minutes, 'cause
all that gluten that you just stretched needs time to relax.
Once it relaxes, you get to roll it out.
So the dough has had time to rest, so the gluten's relaxed,
and we should be able to roll it out pretty nicely.
Really important that you keep it tightly covered,
otherwise it forms something we call an elephant skin,
where it's all dried out and looks like an elephant skin.
(Jodi laughs)
So we're gonna roll the pasta through a machine,
but in China, they have tsunshun,
they cut the pasta, and sometimes they--
- Do the hand stretch and pull noodles.
- Yeah, that is the coolest thing to watch.
So I put a little flour on, and then
I'm going to divide it into three pieces.
And while I'm working with one of them,
I'm going to cover the others, so they don't dry out.
And so this is a little thick to go through
the pasta machine, so we need to roll it out a little bit.
And so you can see, see how it springs back?
That's the gluten.
That's the unique,
one of the unique properties of wheat pasta
and gluten, that it has that stretchiness.
So this pasta machine is a hand crank one.
You can get them with a motor,
and it's a little faster and easier.
But these are pretty reasonably priced.
Basically, the thing about a pasta machine is
you don't ever wash a pasta machine,
because it's full of flour and if you wash it,
it basically just like won't work anymore.
- So how can we clean the machine?
- We use a brush, and brush it out.
So you want it on the largest opening, so this is on seven
and I put some flour in, and roll it through.
And then a little more flour.
And then I pull the dial out and put it down one.
- So it starts from seven and then to six.
- And then as you put it through you need
another pair of hands, 'cause it gets long.
- [Han] And now it is five.
- Now to four.
And see how long it's getting?
It's getting pretty thin.
Pasta when you boil it will triple
in thickness, so you want it thinner than you think.
So you can see,
it's thin, and you can almost see through it.
- [Han] See your hand through the pasta.
- [Jodi] So I'm gonna go down just one more.
- Okay.
So this is almost a meter long.
- Oh yeah. - Oh yeah.
- So you can see my hand through that?
That's perfect.
And so, this is way too long to eat.
So we're gonna cut it into more manageable layers.
And when you stack the pasta on top of each other,
you want to make sure you put flour in between,
cause otherwise all that hard work goes away.
- [Han] They'll be sticking together.
- Oh yeah, you have to re-do everything.
And so this stack I'm going to put on the side
to let it rest while we do the other one.
(upbeat music)
So in China they don't like to cut noodles, right,
'cause it's a symbol of longevity.
- Uh huh, yeah, it really takes time.
(laughing)
- [Jodi] And see how it's doing that weird thing here?
That usually means it needs a little more flour.
Just a little flick here.
(calm music)
- [Han] Can I practice cutting the noodles?
- Of course!
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- [Han] So we hack these.
- So I use a bench scraper to cut the pasta because
I don't want to use a knife on the table
or on a wooden cutting, you know like,
so this is just easier to work with.
(calm music)
- Super. - Great?
- Perfect.
So at this point, the pasta, you could use it
as sheets for lasagna, you could cut it
into squares and make cannolis.
Not cannolis, cannellonis!
Or you can put it through a pasta cutter
that will give you different shapes.
But I wanted to show you how to do it, by hand.
So, make sure you have a good amount of flour on it.
Oops.
And on myself.
And then, I cut fettuccine.
And I could cut it closer together for spaghetti,
really finely for angel hair or capellini.
And you get a fettuccine pasta.
And again.
Really important you make sure there's a lot of flour,
otherwise it just gloms right together.
(calm music)
- Oh wow. - Easy right?
And then you can also stack them together
a couple of times and do it that way.
But it's very quick I think.
(calm music)
- So you can see if you don't put enough flour
how they stick together.
Luckily we're not too bad.
(calm music)
And now we're ready to boil a big pot of water,
and start to make our pasta.
(cheerful music)