Homemade Pasta

If you've ever thought about whether making your own homemade pasta was worth it, let me tell you, YES! I recently went all out on my lasagna and made homemade noodles. These were so delightful and rather simple.  The inspiration came from none other than Alice Waters and "The Art of Simple Food."

Starting with simply flour and eggs. I even went ahead and used 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup unbleached AP flour. Then I added about 1/4 cup of my pumpkin puree. I used this because I wanted to experiment and also because I knew that my pumpkin puree was not extremely flavorful so I knew it would hardly be noticed. Then I added 3 whole fresh eggs. My pasta was a beautiful light golden color mostly because of the fresh bright orange egg yolks. This was kneaded together for a short time and left to sit for at least and hour.

After a good rest the dough is rolled out. I chose to separate this into two sections and roll out thin. Fresh past expands quite a bit in cooking so go about as thin as you can.

Next it is sliced into strips for lasagna or whatever other shape pasta you are going for.

I cooked two strips at a time in a big boiling pot of salted water for only about 3 minutes. I knew that this would be further cooked in the oven so I didn't want to overcook it here. 

Cooked pasta is drained and rinsed in cold water before laying out to rest until lasagna preparation began.

It would have been nice had I taken a picture of the finished product. But wouldn't you know that I once again forgot to photograph and instead dined on the lasagna as soon as I could with some great company! It was mighty tasty!

Later today I shall be attending my first Thanksgiving Dinner of the month. I'm super excited for this dinner with my family of friends. I'm in charge of rolls and sweet potatoes. I've already failed on my bread making as I forgot the yeast in my rolls that I mixed at 7am this morning. I decided that I didn't want to waste the greatness so I've attempted a resuscitation of the dough. We'll see how that turns out. Hopefully I'll remember to take pictures of this dinner!