Rolling out the egg pasta with a rolling pin is indeed an art, but within everyone's reach. Of course, it’s much easier to prepare a uniform and wafer-thin sheet of pasta with an electric or hand crank machine, but don’t you want to have the satisfaction of making it with your own hands? Just two ingredients, a pinch of will power and a bit of elbow grease, and we assure you that you will no longer buy readymade ravioli, tortellini or lasagna.
The ingredients for egg pasta dough
All you need are eggs and flour. Consider that for one egg you'll need 4 oz of flour. No salt, no oil, but if you want to add color to the dough or make it more flavorsome you can add some parsley leaves or boiled spinach, which has been properly squeezed and blended. In this last case you will have to add flour because the spinach makes the dough moister. To get red pasta, just add steamed red turnip and blend and to get yellow past add pumpkin pulp. The spinach, turnip and pumpkin needs to be dosed in small quantities.
How thin does the egg pasta have to be?
It really depends on how you want to use it. Tagliatelle and other long pasta can be quite thick which has a more pleasing texture between your teeth. Tortellini, agnolotti and ravioli, on the other hand, require more careful preparation and the pasta sheet must be thin and transparent almost like a veil. If you are thinking that it’s not possible to achieve such a result by hand, you’re wrong, you just need a little patience.
Rolling out the egg pasta dough: The 10 rules
If you are ready to prepare the dough at home with a rolling pin in hand and a pastry board, you just have to scroll through our gallery to discover the 10 basic rules.