Apparently I have been a pasta snob since childhood. My parents tell a tale where I objected to tinned pasta when I first encountered it on holiday (Isle of Wight early 1970s). At home we normally had dried pasta.

Since then I have been using either dried pasta or shop bought “fresh” pasta.

A week or so ago I had a team building trip to Rome where we were taught to make fresh pasta by an intructing chef.

When I got home I purchased the pasta machine. This is a specialised press and slicer. As this is experimental I bought a cheap one from Lidl.

I have some experience with parts of the process as I have been baking bread for the last decade. One of the tricks I have learned is that dough is linerarly scalable.

Fresh pasta is made from very simple ingredients:

– Pasta Flour

– Semolina (which apparently is for beginners)

– Water

– Salt

Egg (optional)

The recipie that came with the machine called for equal amounts of flour, semolina and slightly less water (plus a pinch of salt). The chef advised that these are only starting points and you will learn to adjust them based upon the ingredients.

I would start with 25g of each per person plus one more to clean the machine. You are meant to put a small test sample through the machine and dispose of it to clean the blades.

Mix all the ingredients together and knead for 10 mins. This should give a soft ball of dough. Wrap in clingflim and leave to proove for half an hour

Take pieces of the dough (covering the remainder) and put it through the pasta machine about 7 times on the widest setting folding it in half each time. Then you can reduce the size to get the thickness of pasta you want. These can then be sliced using the other head of the pasta machine. Mine can make spagetti or tagatelle.

Be carefull to catch the cut pasta as it can start to stick together. I need to get a pasta drying rack to go with the machine. The pasta needs to dry for a while (book says 1 hour, chef much less).

The fresh pasta cooks in boiling water in 2 mins.