How to Make Your Own Pasta

Pasta is one of the greatest foods known to mankind. It’s versatile, easy to work with, and delicious! If you find yourself making a lot of pasta recipes, you might begin to wonder if you can make your own pasta at home rather than buying it fully made at the store. The good news is, you absolutely can! Pasta is one of those foods that you can make without any specialized equipment, although a few kitchen tools might make the process a little easier, as we will see.

1. The ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need before you get started:

• 4 large eggs
  
• 2.5 cups of flour
  
• 1 tbsp of La Española Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  
• 1 tsp salt

Feel free to experiment with what kind of flour you use. If all-purpose flour is all you have in your pantry, that’s a perfectly fine flour to start off with. If you want to branch out a little you can use “00” flour for a smooth, silky texture, or Semola flour for a more robust pasta that clings on to your sauce. Or, you can even mix a combination of any of these flours to fit your needs!

For salt, again, you can use whatever salt you have on hand, but the best option would be finely ground sea salt. You’re also going to want to use this salt in the water you end up boiling the pasta in.

La Española Extra Virgin Olive Oil will give your pasta that unmistakable La Española taste! Extra virgin is recommended above any other type because of its refined flavor and specialization for low-temperature cooking.

2. Mix it up

For centuries, pasta has been made without any specialized equipment, and that is one reason that pasta is a great staple to be made at home. But, if we’re honest, the specialized equipment does make things a lot easier! If you want, you can make this recipe with nothing more than a fork, a knife, and a rolling pin. But you could also add a food processor, a pasta maker, a mixer, and a pasta drying rack. We’ll go through the minimalistic way here, and then explain how the tools can help make it easier.

Dump the flour in a pile on a clean surface and make a well in the center. Then add the eggs, oil, and salt into the well. With a fork, whisk the eggs, and when they’re fully combined, start to add the flour from the edges bit by bit until the egg mixture is nice and thick. Once it’s thick enough to pick up, use your hands to incorporate the rest of the flour by rolling it around and kneading it. Knead it for about 10 more minutes until it’s smooth and elastic. If it starts sticking to the surface or to your hands, just sprinkle some more flour. Simple, right? Well, you can make it simpler by dumping all the ingredients into a food processor or a stand mixer with a dough hook. With a food processor, you’ll want to take it out and knead it, but the dough hook will do all the kneading itself. Once all of that is done and you have the dough in a little ball, wrap it tightly in plastic and let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.

3. Roll it out

Once the dough has rested, you can unwrap it and cut it into quarters. Use one quarter at a time, and immediately wrap back up the rest of the dough so it doesn’t dry out. You’ll want to shape it out into an oval shape and then use a rolling pin to get it down to 1-2 mm. You can speed this process up and make it more precise by rolling your dough through a pasta maker at the thickest setting, folding the dough into thirds, and rolling it again and again, bringing the setting down more each time until you reach your desired thickness.

Once you have your pasta sheet, you can roll it up and cut it into strips with a knife, or run it through your pasta maker with the cutter attachment attached. You can then hang these strips of pasta dough on a pasta drying rack to dry for 30 minutes or swirl them into little “nests” and let them sit on a floured surface. Once they’re dry, heat some salted water up to a rolling boil and cook the fresh pasta until it’s al dente. This will be a lot quicker with fresh pasta than with the pasta you get at the store, and the speed will depend on the thickness of the pasta, so keep a good eye on it. It should be ready in about 90 seconds.

4. Bonus!

Once your pasta is all cooked, drizzle it with a little bit of La Española Flavored Olive Oils, such as garlic or white truffle for an extra special kick!

And that’s it! If you try this recipe, feel free to show us on Facebook or Instagram! We’d love to see what you’ve been making with La Española!