Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Help! My young Prince Charming needs some help!

 Dear Bloggy Friends,

My boy, Charming, has impressed his father and me by making pasta from scratch!  Yep, if I did nothing else right, I raised a young man who is cooking from scratch, really from scratch.  Anyway, below is the post he wrote on Superman's blog, sharing is success and posting some of his questions. 

Can any of you share your knowledge and help him?  As you can read below, he's having a few issues and doesn't quite know where to go now.  Even if you can't help, I think pasta from scratch is worthy of a pat on the back, don't you?

Thanks a lot!

(Written by Charming and taken from 365 and a Wake Up)

So this is my first moderately successful attempt to make pasta. As you can see, it certainly looks the part. And I'll be completely honest -it was totally fun to make. So here's what I learned:

1 - Don't put the entire ball of dough through the machine at once. It can't handle it, and you'll end up tearing your dough. The recipe I used called for two cups of flour and three eggs and I had to divide it into three pieces to get it to go through right.

2 - Pasta dough is soft, especially when you've rolled it out all the way. It's also very fragile, and that pasta you see up there actually mushed itself back together simply through its own weight. Be sure to separate your pasta strands.

3 - Boxed pasta is apparently seasoned. Either that, or however I made my pasta turned it very, very bland. Soft and tender, yes, but bland.

OK, so making pasta was totally cool. I'll admit to being a little hesitant after my first try, but after making sure I properly kneaded the dough, let it rest, and put it into the machine as manageable chunks, it was really actually ridiculously easy. Literally, you just pop it in the machine and it gets long and skinny. Two cups of flour and three eggs equated to a sheet of pasta easily twelve feet long by six inches wide. Now, with that said, I found the pasta just a tad bit chewy, so I think I'll stop at the second-to-last thickness next time.
Leave Comments!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent job! Everything tastes better from scratch....but I do recommend adding a smidge of salt to the dough, like maybe 1/2 tsp. Will make a big difference.

Again, WOW!

Anonymous said...

My guess is the store bought stuff also has sugar added, most stuff today does. And probably even a little butter. To me, it tastes better to season stuff after I cook it, but not sure if it is the same with homemade pasta. Not a big fan of pasta dishes, so we eat very little.

LaVonne said...

That is so great. I have never made pasta from scratch even! I am impressed! Good for you mom, for raising such a great boy.

Blessings!