Basic Fettucine

This is my basic pasta recipe which will be used often in future posts. I like my pasta to be soft, so I only use whole wheat pastry flour and eggs. If you don't like the past to be so soft, you can substitute a third of the flour for semolina flour.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
• 2 large eggs

 These quantities are for a half recipe which I use at home and it is enough for3 servings.

NOTE: If you don't want to use whole wheat pastry flour, you can use regular all purpose flour. If you only have regular whole wheat flour, try using 1/3 whole wheat flour and 2/3 regular all purpose flour.

Preparation

Place the flour on the surface where you will be working with the dough and make a hole in the middle. Crack the two whole eggs as shown below:

Flower and eggs

After you placed the eggs in the middle of the flour, use a fork to whisk the eggs whites with the yolk:

Whisked egg whites and yolk

Slowly use your hands or a fork to incorporate the flour into the eggs:

Mixing the flour and the eggs

After you incorporate the eggs with the flour, start kneading the dough with the end of your palm:

Kneading the dough

Keep kneading the dough until it is no longer sticking to your fingers. You may need to add additional flour, depending on the humidity and egg size. I like to leave my dough a bit sticky and use some extra flour when opening it:

Dough ready to rest and open

If you are not going to roll the dough immediately, wrap it with some clear plastic to avoid the outside from drying and becoming too hard.

When ready, cut pieces of the dough, flatten a bit and start rolling it. Start at setting 1 and work towards the desired thickness (rolled to setting 5 in the pictures):

Rolling the dough open

Once you have rolled all the dough, you are ready for cutting the fettucine. I use the Fettucine cutter attachment and have the pasta pot of water already boiling when I start cutting:

Cutting the pasta

After cutting, place the cut pasta into the boiling water and cook to your preference. Remember that fresh pasta cooks much quicker than dried pasta.

Here's the result of the hard work, seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil and some fresh Parmesan cheese:

Fettucine with olive oil, salt and pepper

Hope you enjoyed it. In the future, I will be showing variations, using different ingredients and additions to the basic recipe.

About myself

My name is Francisco and I love pasta. Since I was a little boy, my favorite food has always been pasta. We would go every Sunday to a restaurant and I would order my favorite pasta at the time: taglierini al sugo.
 I grew into other pasta shapes over time: caneloni, lasagna, gnocchi, capelletti, rondelli. I used to visit one of my uncles who made his own pasta. I remember the old machine with a manual handle and the pasta drying until cooking time. Good memories.

A couple of years ago, while my wife was traveling, I decided to make my own pasta for the first time. It wasn't the greatest thing on Earth but it started the seed. I started making pasta every Sunday and I have been doing it ever since. On father's day of that year, I got the Kitchen Aid Pasta Roller and Fettuccine cutter for the Kitchen Aid mixer we own. This made the making process much easier and the results look awesome. Later, I got a new toy that is a pasta press that makes other shapes such as spaghetti, rigatoni and bucatini.

I will be posting my experiences making pasta, with different shapes and flavors.

Christmas Pasta: tomato and spinach fettuccine

Hope you enjoy the blog, the pasta ideas and recipes. Be sure to stop at my wife's blog as well: http://kitchenspace.blogspot.com