Fun With Noodles

Homemade Pasta
from Better Homes and Gardens
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 beaten eggs
1/3 cup water
1 tsp cooking oil or olive oil

1. In a large bowl stir together 2 cups of the flour and the salt. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. In a small bowl combine the eggs, water and oil. Add egg mixture to the flour mixture; stir to combine.
2. Sprinkle a clean kneading surface with the remaining 1/3 cup flour. Turn dough out onto flour surface. Knead until dough is smooth and elastic (8 to 10 minutes total). Cover and let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
3. Divide the dough into 4 equal portions. On lightly floured kneading srugace, roll each dough portion into a 12-inch square (about 1/16 inch thick). Let stand uncovered, about 20 minutes. Cut as desired. If using a pasta machine, pass each portion through machine according to manufacturer's directions until dough is 1/16 thick. Let stand; cut as desired.
4. To serve immediately, cook noodles in boiling, salted water for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.

Makes about 1 pound pasta.

I have a good recipe for Chicken & Noodles. It's really hearty and feeds a crowd easily. I may post that recipe at a later date but today I'm talking about the noodles. With each of our moves I had to try to find good quality noodles for this recipe. I even once used broken fettucine because I couldn't find the style of noodles I wanted. As this has been a source of frustration, I wondered if it would be easier to just make my own but thought that only people with the skill of say my grandmother could do it. Then I saw Joy the Baker do it recently and while she certainly is on a different level than I, it gave me the courage to try.

The ingredients.

The well.

The dough ready to be kneaded.

The kneaded dough. Would you believe that I had never kneaded anything before? It went well. I might even have the courage to try some regular bread now. Maybe.

Now here comes the tricky part. You wouldn't think that cutting would be the hardest part of this recipe but it most definitely was for me. As I knew that I had some backup frozen noodles that I could use in a pinch, I experimented to find the best technique.

One of the ideas presented in the cookbook was to loosely roll the sheet of pasta and then cut it and unroll it. I guess I didn't use enough dusting flour because I rolled, cut and then couldn't get the sheet to unroll.

So then I tried the basic cutting with a flat sheet with a knife approach.

But then I thought it would be easier and quicker if I switched to the pizza cutter.

Both method of cutting worked fine but then I was still left with the problem of how to get my much too sticky dough strips off the cutting board without stretching and destroying them.

As you can tell, I tried endlessly to peel the strips off the table too. It didn't go well.

I received a pasta machine for Christmas a couple of years ago and have never had the courage to try it out. Now seemed like the time. While it took a bit to get the hang of the process, it really does make things much easier. I'll be using it next time exclusively instead of rolling the dough out by hand.

Tyler thoroughly enjoyed trying out the machine on the portions of dough I destroyed. All of his playing really helped us figure out all the tricks. Thanks for your help sweetie!

The finished product: unfortunately I had to throw out much of the noodles because they either got stuck and therefore demolished or because the pasta machine was a little dusty for the first portion (that portion really cleaned things out though). There was only a little bit left after all of that but wow was it good. I will most definitely try this again because the noodles are incredible. There is no comparison between these noodles and the noodles you get at the store (even the Amish noodles) so I think they are so worth the extra effort. Next time I'll just make sure to use plenty of flour in the rolling out process.