I got the Backyard Homestead the other day. Cool book on how to do things in your own backyard, that is if you have a flat piece of land, with a lot of light, something they don’t seem to consider, but I degrees. Anyway, I found a mention of making pasta from scratch. I had never though of that, but it seemed to be easy enough, so I set out doing so.
The ingredients were flour, eggs and salt, all of which I had. Of course, I used gluten-free flour, and realized that I would have to use more eggs, so for the 2 and 3/4 cups of lour I added 5 eggs instead of three. The book also suggested adding a veggie, so I used the blender to cut up some carrots, but it didn’t quite work as well as I had hoped, although it added a nice orange color to the pasta.
So, here is what the final mix was:
- 2 3/4 cups of non-gluten flour
- 5 Eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon of alt
- 1/2 cup of pureed carrots
Mixing the dough
The book is kind of cool, but I think it expects you to check other sources, because, although it explained how to mix it with our hands, it didn’t explain how to cut it up.
kneading the dough
Kneading the dough was sort of fun, and the dough seemed to be doing what it was supposed to, until I got to the part where I had to roll it out by hand, as I didn’t have a pasta press, or whatever it is called.
Cut up pasta
I fought I found a good source on the “How Stuff Words” website that showed people rolling out the pasta and then cutting it up, but they also showed people getting it really thin and hanging it up to dry. I have never had luck with making pastry of any kind thin. I simply can’t do it. The dough always sticks to either the board or to the rolling pin, or to my hands, or to something. It just doesn’t work, and didn’t work this time either.
Testing the taste
One of the thing that the website said and the book both said was to drop the dough in boiling water, and then let it cook until it was al dente. I let it drain int he sink, and wondered if it would work. Cartoonist took the first bite, and said it tasted like pasta should, so I figured that I had sort of succeeded.
Now to just figure out how to make it thinner.
Not quite a kitchen failure, but not quite a success either.
