A few indispensable tips and tricks to making fresh pasta at home learned in the world capital of pasta: Italy. Making fresh pasta is honestly easier than you think!
Nicole dollops a filling of ricotta cheese and roasted pureed squash onto fresh pasta sheets for ravioli.
Double Zero Flour
Double zero flour is basically ultra-refined, extra fine flour. It seemed to be the only flour our Italian chef Gaitano used in pasta making, and it’s super fine texture leaves your fresh pasta extra silky and tender, especially if you’re making pasta shapes such as penne or fussilli. Double zero flour can be somewhat hard to find in this country, but my dad buys it in 25 pound bags from an Italian specialty grocery store and my brother gets it on amazon. If you are able to access it, it will truly change your fresh pasta making experience.
Super Fresh Ingredients
This honestly might be the most difficult of my tips to integrate into your at-home pasta making endeavors, but also likely the most important one. Super fresh ingredients absolutely make all the difference in any cooking. But with pasta being so simple and delicate, the importance of fresh ingredients is amplified with there only being a handful of them to begin with. Italy has some of the freshest, most vibrantly yellow (almost orange) eggs I’ve ever seen, and they lend their color and flavor to an ultra dark and rich pasta dough. The ricotta cheese we used for ravioli was freshly made in a cheese shop down the street. Of course it’s much harder to find fresh ingredients of that caliber in this country, but do your best to get your hands on the highest quality stuff you can; fresh eggs from local farms if possible, or homemade cheese from local cheese shops. You can even try making your own fresh ricotta!
Additions to Fresh Pasta Dough
As I mentioned earlier, at our house my brother makes fresh pasta quite often. But we honestly never thought off adding any other ingredients to the dough for extra flavor. Gaitano showed us that you can definitely do this, adding fresh parsley and parmesan cheese to a pasta dough of half semolina and half double zero flour. With this recipe he also showed us a super simple technique in which he simply rolled the dough out into sheets and cut them into hand trimmed noodles. The parsley and parmesan brought an added freshness to the noodles, bringing life and flavor to this dish not only through the sauce but also through the pasta itself. You’ll be amazed by the depth of flavor this simple technique brings to any pasta recipe, and it’s definitely one we’re planning on integrating into our at-home pasta making.
Potato-free Gnocchi
- ¾ cup water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups flour (00 flour preferable)
- Bring water and salt to a simmer over medium heat. Turn heat off and add flour, stirring rapidly until a dough is formed.
- Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and somewhat elastic, 3 minutes. Divide dough into quarters and roll each piece out into 1 inch thick ropes. Cut ropes of dough into 1 inch pieces, and if desired roll each piece on the tongs of a fork to form ridges.
- Cook the gnocchi in boiling water for 3-5 minutes and serve with your favorite sauce.
I liked that you pointed out that you can get potato-free gnocchi. That does seem like it might help simplify the process of making the gnocchi. I would be really interested in trying something like that because it seems really unique.