Two eggs, one cup of all-purpose flour. Knead till it comes together. Wrap it and let it rest a half hour. Roll it out and cut it. Homemade pasta is one of the great pleasures of the kitchen. Great activity to get your kids into the kitchen with too.
That's it, that's all I have to say. I found this picture Donna took a while back and it inspired me to make it. Which is what I think the best food photography does: it inspires us. Thanks, Donna!
N. Farias
Kids? Bah. It's a great way to seduce women is what it is. Something about all that kneading.
Arundathi
Loved that post. The photograph is cool - inspired to make my own pasta tomorrow!
The Italian Dish
Molto bello! It looks like you have the wider Imperia pasta rollers. I've been thinking of getting these. I just use my KitchenAid rollers, but they are fairly narrow. Gorgeous photo.
Melissa
And if you're lucky enough to have an Italian mother-in-law you also learn to make pasta gnocchi using the little wooden grooved butter paddles and her recipe for homemade spicy sausage - yum!
Laura
Before the last of our eggs disappear I'd like to make some pasta. Got a specific recommendation for a pasta maker? I see that yours is an Imperia?
luis
The Italian Dish, I have one of those two. Honestly my previous attempts to make pasta failed because I used one egg to one cup of flour and a tbsp of h2o.
Then I read Marcela Hazan's recipe which is two eggs per cup of flour. Now MR's blog confirms the two eggs per cup o'flour thing.
But I am blogging you because my cutter does not give me a clean spagetti cut. Don't know if I am doing something wrong... wrong setting? but it doesn't cleanly cut my spaghetti. That whole pasta business has gone sideways in my kitchen ever since we blogged about it a couple of months back. Is there anything that I can do to make that cutter behave? is it the recipe or the setting. What is your setting??? I'd kill for the clean looking pasta strands MR is picturing above...
Lamar
Lordy Lord. A great pasta maker is a must. I remember the first time I tried to roll out a triple batch of the stuff by hand...I nearly popped my spleen.
My Imperia pasta maker does just fine with thin slices, by the way. Though I mostly like it made in sheets, and hand cut it after that. Is your dough strong enough? Are you trying to roll the pasta too thinly for the slicer to get it's teeth into it? Those are the only things I can think of that would hinder you...
Pasta Amateur
Hi, I'm hoping you might have some tips on how to avoid metal shavings coming through the pasta when you make it from scratch. I have a new pasta maker and haven't been able to make a batch that looks safe to eat yet!
Karin (Grew up in Cleveland and miss it in VA)
Back to the kid thing.
One snow-bound weekend (few and far between in VA!) when my children were about 6 and 11, I was waxing poetic about my mother's homemade noodle soup. The children were incredulous. You can't make your own noodles they said.
And so we did. They weren't perfect and they weren't pretty as in the beautiful photo above. We made the dough together and I cut them by hand just as my mother had. They still tasted good with spaghetti sauce.
My children, now 14 and 20 still talk about it.
Michael Franco
Homemade pasta - says it all!
redman
it should be kneaded for several minutes after it comes together in order to make the dough tough and glutinous, which is what gives good pasta its world of texture in a sheet thin enough to read a newspaper through
Frank M
That photo inspired me to actually go get a pasta maker!
FM
johnnyd
This is the third time I'm chatting about something culinary and it shows up the next day on Michael's blog - that and our Dads' dying the same day. We clearly have to meet someday, sir. Sadly, I cannot make the Lovefest in Camden next weekend - but next time your near Portland, get in touch!
cory
i swear there is nothing more rewarding in all of cookery, than the construciton of a noodle.
JG
"knead"...I'm surprised you didn't catch that!
Andy Coan
My wife and I were just deciding to buy ourselves a pasta machine for Christmas this year...it may end up being an early present!
Michael Obertone
MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER MADE TORTELLONI WITH DUCK CONFIT AND RICOTTA AND A SECOND BATCH OF RICOTTA AND ROMANO. WE HAD BOUGHT FARM FRESH EGGS WITH A BRILLANT YELLOW YOLK AND "00" FLOUR. EVEN BEFORE ROLLING IT OUT IT HAD THE MOST AMAZING TEXTURE. GOOD INGREDIENT YIELD GOOD PRODUCTS. DINNER TOMORROW NIGHT IS THE DUKE CONFIT TORTELLONI IN DUCK CONSOMME.
Elise
I have that same Imperia machine and I love it, except I had the same problem a previous commenter mentioned: the noodles did not get cleanly cut. Lots of them stuck together, which made the whole process take much longer than it should have. Also in some cases, the pasta dough got smooshed into the cutter and wouldn't come out at all. I thought I was using tons and tons of flour!! Could this be a result of not enough flour, or could there be something else going on?
ruhlman
pasta amateur, perhaps take a metal brush to the wheels? i've never had that problem. i would think that rolling several piece of dough through it should take them out. if not, i'd return it and get another.
elise, the sticking together can be a problem. make sure you dough is very well floured. you can even let it dry a little. if it's too moist, they reattach after they go through the cutter.
Connor
What's the best way to store extra (fresh) pasta? I often hesitate to make fresh pasta unless I'm going to use it same day, and I haven't been able to find good instructions on how to keep it. Thanks.
bob
I definitely find it necessary to let the pasta sheets dry a bit before running it through the spaghetti dye. It also helps to dry it a little before rolling garganelli, or other hand rolled pastas that need to support themselves. pasta rules!
Russ H
The photos on your blog are great and rally do inspire me to try things...
I always hated mayonaise. Then I read how simple it was and saw the ingredients (Eggs and oil, and lemon juice? Why would I not like that?) and that grabbed my intrest, but it was your wife's beautiful photos that really grabbed me and made me want to make my own mayo.
So thanks to your instruction and the fantastic photos, I now always hve some homemade mayo at hand. It turn out mayo is one of those thing that when made at home is a hundred times better than any mass produced product.
Timothy Ross
Dear Mr. Ruhlman,
While I may not be voting for Obama I do love reading your blog and tried your pasta recipe last night. Two eggs and a cup of flour was perfect. I braved the kneading with my own intuition and had pretty good results. I no longer fear making pasta and thank you for a sound recipe.
Tish
Just made ravioli using your ratio. I've had a pasta machine for ever but for some reason decided it was too much work. Reading your book and browsing back through the blog it looked dead easy, and in fact only took an hour including making the filling (pork & chicken) and hand assembling the ravioli. The sauce was easy - I bottle 50 jars of roasted tomato sauce each year. Ravioli made at the request of my seven year old son who has been glued to the latest series of Masterchef, and highly approved of by my four year old son "Mummy can we have this dinner again soon?" Thanks for the inspiration I expect to be making pasta regularly from now on.