Pasta Dough

With Stephanie Smith

Pasta dough is easier to make than most people think, especially if you use a food processor. It is similar to making any kind of dough but rolling it out is another matter. The traditional Italian method of roling it out by hand, which is often strenuous and time consuming, can be made much easier with a pasta rolling attachment for a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. After riolling the dough into sheets, you can decide whether to use it for ravioli, lasagna, linguine or fettucine.

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup semolina flour
3 large eggs
3 tsp. olive oil
½ tsp. salt
¼ to 1/3 of a cup
Flour as needed for kneading

Instructions

1. Add flour, salt, oil and eggs into a food processor bowl. Add small amount of water through the spillway on top and mix, checking after about 30 seconds to a minute.
2. If it is still too crumbly, add a little more water and mix again.
3. When moist, remove from food processor bowl onto a floured surface and knead about 2 to 3 minutes.  Split the dough in half and knead a little more.
4. Pass ½ of the dough through a Kitchen Aid Mixer Pasta Attachment, starting at the number 1 (about ¼ inch) a couple of passes. You will want to do this until the dough looses the holes by folding it onto the floured surface a few times until it comes out smooth and holds together. (Note: You will want to separate the dough pieces in half again about halfway through the process.)
5. Keep repeating until you work your way to the last and thinnest setting on the pasta attachment, the # 6.
6. Place finished sheets of pasta dough onto a clothes drying rack or some other clean surface to wait for further use.

You can also use an attachment to cut the pasta sheets into several forms, such as linguine or fettuccine, or just use the sheets to make ravioli.

Recipe courtesy of Stephanie Smith, Changing Tides Gift Shop, ACE Hardware, 2011.

Stephanie grew up in Connecticut as a latch key kid of two full time working parents.  When she got home from school she would do experiments in the kitchen with whatever ingredients she could reach. 

“I remember one day after school looking for the peanut butter for a snack, when I could not find it, I decided to make my own.  I got out some butter and some peanuts, put them all into a baggy and rolled it out with a rolling pin.  Hey, how was I supposed to know, at age 6, that peanut butter has no butter!  It didn’t look quite right, and tasted different, but as I recall, it wasn’t half bad.”

Stephanie was in 3rd grade when she decided to make cupcakes for her mom’s birthday.  No recipe of course.  She had watched her mom and grandmother bake, so she knew you needed flour, sugar, eggs and vanilla.  She cannot remember what else she found to dump in, but does remember that they resembled hockey pucks!  Her mom smiled, took a bite, and said how thoughtful she was.  They next day when they were gone, her dad said he’d eaten them all.  She is sure they ended up in the town dump. 

She says that her cooking has improved since then, but has remained a fun and creative outlet for her.  When she was just out of college and teaching in Boston, living on a teacher’s salary was not enough, so she began working for a catering company in Charlestown.  She also started cooking for friend’s dinners and cocktail parties out of her small apartment kitchen in Boston.  The next thing she knew she had trays of food spread into the living room, kitchen and anywhere there was a spot.  Her roommates would take off the minute they saw the grocery bags come in. 

Since she moved to Rockport and married her husband Jay, she has catered many dinners for the masons, catered many events for the family businesses and staff events, catered friends showers and events and entertained many friends. She reads cookbooks for fun, while others read novels.  She is a self-taught cook but experimenting, practicing and of course eating has taught her well.  She is not afraid of flavor and thinks her food reflects that. She loves to see what she can do to improve or embellish other’s recipes.   “It’s fun, enjoyable and makes people happy!”

She also loves to knit, scrap book and is a potter with a wonderful studio.  However, she says that she has no time, unfortunately, for any of those things.  The way I get to be creative is in her kitchen.  She always makes time to cook for her children, family and friends.  After all, to Stephanie, “food is love!”