Tired of karaoke pasta? Here’s how to promote your pasta from a resounding “meh” to GREAT pasta!

- Ingredients:
- 1⁄2 lb. Basic Pasta Dough Flour Mix
- 8 egg yolks, at room temperature
- 3 to 4 tbsp. tepid water
Mound the flour in a large bowl and push some of it out to the edges to make a crater in the center.
Lightly beat the egg yolks and water together and pour into the crater.
With a fork, scoop flour into the egg yolk mixture, starting at the inner edge.
When about half the flour has been mixed with the eggs and the mixture is a crumbly mass, put the dough on a lightly floured work surface.
Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, pushing your palm into the ball, flipping the top edge back over, then turning the ball 90 degrees before kneading it again.
When you see small bubbles appearing on the surface, the dough has been kneaded enough.
Tip:
If you’re making a stuffed pasta, the dough should stick to your fingers a little bit. If you’re making sheets or strips, add a little more flour so the dough releases more easily.
Form the dough into a round ball, wrap it in plastic and let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.
After the dough has rested, the pasta will be ready to roll out by hand or with a pasta machine.
Another Tip:
If you want to promote your pasta from okay pasta to great pasta, go buy Aliza Green’s Making Artisan Pasta.
I tried making my own pasta a dozen times. I got all the right ingredients and I carefully followed the recipe or video, but I never got it beyond a resounding “meh.” It looked sort of like pasta and it tasted kind of like pasta, but it wasn’t even as good as store-bought dry pasta.
My Italian granny made unbelievably wonderful pasta—pasta so good that store-bought pasta tasted like a poor imitation (I call it karaoke pasta!).
She died when I was a teenager. If I could travel back in time, the first thing I’d do would be to spend a month or so cooking with her and learning all the secrets I didn’t know were so precious.
Well, that’s not gonna happen. But this book is a darn good alternative. It’s crammed full of little tips and and nuggets of wisdom you won’t know unless you spend 30 years making your own pasta (or you’ve got an Italian granny and you’re smart enough to learn her secrets!).
Making fresh pasta by hand is quite a bit of work, and it’s a lot more expensive than grabbing a box of spaghetti or fettuccine or whatever at the grocery store.
But it’s worth it. Once you start getting your pasta chops, you’ll never settle for karaoke pasta again.