Yer Basic 8‑Yolk Pasta Dough

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

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.

Buy. This. Book. Mak­ing Arti­san Pasta.