Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [65]
The machine, on the other hand, requires virtually no skill to use. Once you have learned to combine eggs and flour into a dough that is neither too moist nor too dry, all you do is follow a series of extraordinarily simple, mechanical steps and you can produce fine fresh pasta inexpensively, at home, at the very first attempt.
The flour In Italy, the classic fresh egg pasta produced in the Bolognese style is made with a flour known as 00, doppio zero. It is a talcum-soft white flour, less strong in gluten than American all-purpose flour of either the bleached or unbleached variety. When, outside of Italy, I make fresh pasta at home, I have found that unbleached all-purpose flour does the most consistently satisfying job: It is easy to work with; the pasta it produces is plump and has marvelous texture and fragrance.
Confusion exists over the merits of semolina, which is milled from durum, the strongest of wheats. In Italian it is called semola di grano duro, and you will find it listed on all Italian packages of factory-made pasta. It is the only suitable flour for industrially produced pasta, but I do not prefer it for home use. To begin with, its consistency is often grainy, even when it is sold as pasta flour, and grainy semolina is frustrating to work with. Even when it is milled to the fine, silky texture you need, you must use a machine to roll it out; to try to do it with a rolling pin is to face a nearly hopeless struggle. My advice is to leave semolina flour to factories and to commercial pasta makers: At home use unbleached all-purpose flour.
PASTA BY THE MACHINE METHOD
The machine The only kind of pasta machine you should consider is the kind that has one set of parallel cylinders, usually made of steel, for kneading and thinning the dough, and a double set of cutters, one broad for fettuccine, the other for tagliolini, very narrow noodles. Virtually all these machines are hand-cranked, but electric ones are made, and there is also a separate motor one can buy that connects easily to the machine’s shaft to replace the crank.
Do not be tempted by one of those awful devices that masticate eggs and flour at one end and extrude a choice of pasta shapes through another end. What emerges is a mucilaginous and totally contemptible product, and moreover, the contraption is an infuriating nuisance to clean.
For yellow pasta dough 1 cup unbleached flour and 2 large eggs produce about ¾ pound homemade pasta, which will yield 3 standard portions or 4 of appetizer dimensions. Use the above as an approximate ratio of flour to eggs, which you may need to alter depending on the absorption capacity of the eggs, and sometimes, even on the humidity or lack thereof in the kitchen.
Note If making dough for stuffed yellow pasta, add ½ tablespoon of milk to the above proportions.
For green pasta dough 1½ cups unbleached flour, 2 large eggs, and either ½ of a 10-ounce package of frozen leaf spinach, thawed, OR ½ pound fresh spinach. The yield is approximately 1 pound of green pasta, which produces 4 standard portions.
If using thawed frozen spinach, cook it in a covered pan with ¼ teaspoon salt until it is tender and loses its raw taste. If using fresh spinach, wash it and cook it. Drain either kind of spinach of all liquid, and when cool enough to handle, squeeze it in your hands to force it to shed any remaining liquid. Chop very fine with a knife, but not in a food processor, which draws out too much moisture.
Note