Although I am not exactly sure when the first time I had fresh pasta was, I’m guessing that it was the first Christmas that I had teeth enough to chew it. Once a year, several days before the holiday, my grandmother would bring out her huge, heavy wooden board and a long rolling pin and the kneading, punching, pounding, slapping, and eventually, the endless hand rolling would commence, often lasting for two days – all for the moment when we would sit down to the famous first course of Christmas dinner, ravioli in homemade chicken stock.

Others in our family have tried to match my grandmother’s pasta-making skills, but none of us have succeeded in recreating the experience of biting into those tenderest of tender little pillows. We also all concluded that while the end result may be worth it, none of us had the fortitude, patience, or upper body strength to make the amount required to feed the entire family (turns out that my grandmother is superwoman encased in a tiny Italian woman’s body).  For although the process begins with the innocent whisking of eggs with a fork on a mound of flour, the process soon becomes physically taxing, with or without the pasta rolling machine.

The more the mixture integrates, the harder this gets, until you are using your fingers to work the dough.

But work the dough you must, kneading and then pounding, pushing and pulling, until sticky changes  to rough and stiff, and finally…

…the dough becomes a very smooth, very hard mound, which requires airtight wrapping and refrigeration. This will give you time to rest those sore muscles.

I’ve made pasta a few times at home now but this is the first time that I’ve ever had the luxury of using a pasta rolling machine, which became mine when my mother lost patience with pasta making and passed it on to me. I’ve never asked Grammy how she feels about pasta machines, but I’m sure she would not approve.

It saves you a lot of the pain of rolling, but it is still hand crank and a much easier process when done with two people – one person to crank, the other to guide the pasta through the machine. I was fortunate to have Brian there to help me with the cranking and photography.

After you refrigerate your dough for at least one hour, you remove it from the fridge and cut it into inch thick slices, which you should try to flatten a bit with your fingers before feeding them into the machine. The first time through, the machine should be set to it’s largest setting. If you have no machine, no worries, with some elbow grease and a rolling pin (of uniform diameter, not tapered) you can achieve the desired results, just like Grammy.

The dough going through the first couple times will look sad – full of holes and weak. Just put it back together as best you can, and double the dough back over on itself and run it through again.

After running it through doubled once on the largest setting, reduce the size to 5 (assuming you are on a 1 to 10 scale). The machine will help shape it into the right width, but it’s ok if it’s not perfect. It will get smoother and more silky each time.

Retune the machine down to your desired thickness and run it through a final time. Your pasta sheets will be firm and resilient. Try to lay them out flat – this was a challenge for me due to size limitations in the East Village Kitchen.

But there you have it. Actual homemade pasta, destined for two beautiful dishes – which will be revealed in my next two posts!

Fresh Pasta Recipe

5 cups flour (if you can get your hands on type 00, this is the best to use – it’s a bit finer. Otherwise, all-purpose works fine)

6 eggs (free-range is ideal)