As we sit at home during this strange and tumultuous year, we naturally turn to our kitchens to think about new concoctions to create. Many of us have tried our hands at making bread and pizza or have simply baked sweets for hours of stress eating.
But one of the simplest and most rewarding pleasures to be found in the kitchen is making pasta from scratch. The meditative elements of mixing eggs and flour and kneading a little dough ball until it turns that lustrous yellow color and bounces back to the touch has a certain Zen-like quality, especially after it’s cooked and devoured. At La Cucina Italiana, we are obviously obsessed with pasta, and sharing with our readers the best and most innovative ways to make those slurp-worthy strings of spaghetti.
With that said, we collected a roundup of some of the best pasta-making cookbooks to help you join the legions of pastai and sfogliare who have discovered the wonders of practicing pasta-making at home.
For the Beginner (and beyond):
Mastering Pasta: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pasta, Gnocchi, and Risotto
by Marc Vetri with David Joachim
Renowned, James Beard award-winning chef Marc Vetri has placed his entire knowledge of pasta into one book that will help any budding dough roller reach their pasta goals. There are more than 100 recipes to choose from, but Vetri goes into explicit detail on types of flour and dough and eggs and everything else you need to know to create ravenously shaped ravioli or exquisitely extruded bucatini.
For the Artist:
Pasta Pretty Please: A Vibrant Approach to Handmade Noodles by Linda Miller Nicholson
This rainbow filled cookbook is Linda Miller Nicholson’s ode to noodle art. The self-described pasta ninja teaches her tricks on how to create colorful (and healthy) pasta with 25 different doughs and 33 shaping tutorials. People often ask what food coloring she uses to make these miraculous creations, but all of her dough is naturally dyed using herbs and veggies so you can feel good while making your own Monet’s out of macaroni.
For the Tinkerer:
The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Every Kind of Amazing Pasta Your Pasta Maker Can Make by Lucy Vaserfirer
The title says it all as chef/author Lucy Vaserfirer gives you detailed lessons on getting the most from every type of pasta tool on the market. If you have a Kitchen-Aid or a hand crank or a sit-down extruder, Vaserfirer has instructions to make the most of the mechanical side of pasta practices. The book also includes more than 100 recipes that goes above and beyond pastas like how to make semolina crackers or getting the right dough rolled out for crispy cannoli. If you’re into tools and machines to make your pasta shine, this is the book for you.
For the Purist:
American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta by Evan Funke
Evan Funke is a pasta evangelist who studied in Italy in pursuit of the purest form of pasta making. For pasta-perfection-pursuers, this book teaches a variety of classic shapes, proper doughs, and recipes to use them in that will wow and amaze on every level. Evan often says “f*** your pasta machine” (sorry Lucy) and wants readers to roll their dough with a wooden mattarello to achieve the silkiness he thinks all pastas deserve.