Hi… anybody use one of these, and do you mix your own dough for it?
I have had one for many years, and for the most part the pasta has turned out well (certainly better than dried). But more recently I have been making it by hand, or now in a KitchenAid mixer, and it is way better.
But this does not work well in the extruder… it jams up and clogs the worm gear. I know the recipes for the extruder call for a dryer mix, but before I go on an experimentation spree I am hopeful someone here has already done it.
One of my favs is linguini, and I just can’t cut that by hand, so it would be nice to use the extruder again.
Do you mean an extruder like this Phillips? I gave family one last year and we played with it a little, but there was too much else going on so it’s still a pending project.
It comes with its own recipes - you can’t use a normal pasta recipe. The “dough” looks crumbly until it goes through, but if you add more liquid, it jams up the machine as you said.
Others here use it too - paging @ChristinaM. You might try a search on the Whats For Dinner thread for homemade pasta.
Never have tried one but if I made pasta often I’d be interested.
Today I just make a simple dough mixing it in a small food processor, wrapping in plastic to rest, then cranking it through a pasta mill. It’s minimal effort and easy clean up for a super basic pasta.
1 large egg
2/3 c all purpose flour
Add flour to processor
Stir egg, add to flour
Knead 30 seconds
If too dry, add 1T water and kneed more
If too wet, add 1T flour and knead
Mine is similar, but it is a decades old Moulinex. It does come with its own ingredient list, but even when followed to the letter it can be hit or miss (guess it is a local humidity thing).
Plus I just like my handmade recipe better. Guess I’ll just need to experiment with the liquid levels in that recipe, starting with maybe 20% more flour.
I’ve a look at your recipe, for 200g of flour, you use 124g of egg/water/evoo mixture. It is wetter than mine, more difficult to work with. The recipe I use is 500g of flour (250g type 00 and 250g semolina) and 250g of egg. Also, I never add salt, but salt only the water when cooking. (My recipe specified not to add any salt.) There is a discussion on whether to salt the dough here.
Thanks Naf… but I use salt because fresh pasta doesn’t spend much time in the water, and don’t want to over-salt the water as I often use some of it in the sauce.
As for gluten, the KitchenAid’s dough hook works the heck out of the dough, plus I let it rest for at least a half hour before I roll it out. So I have never had an issue with texture… even the super thin sheets I use for ravioli.
IIRC I’ve never used salt in the extruder, but it has been a long time since I’ve used it, and my handmade recipe is something I have developed over that time.
Maybe I should just get a linguini cutter and ditch the extruder. The linguini disc is a PITA to clean (and the whole thing can be hit or miss somewhat), and all other pasta I cut by hand.
I read a bit more on salt and pasta dough, most argument is about how salt weakens the protein structure and make the pasta chewy. Although, Asian noodle dough has salt in it. I don’t know if it’s a dogmatic issue, ie authentic Italian recipes do not use salt, so we shouldn’t etc. One argument I’ve come across is about how salt will make dough sticky if you are using a machine afterwards.
LOL, I guess this is the way to go. Make a few batch with different moisture and see how it goes with your extruder.
I’ve Kitchenaid but never made the pasta dough using it, since quantity is small, I prefer making it by hand. You have tried both ways, how is it different?
That’s a great question. Note that I have not used both methods side by side for comparison. I started making it by hand, but it took a lot of kneading… and sometimes it came out sticky, and not elastic enough to roll out thin and make reliable ravioli (tearing, falling apart in the water). This might have been due to different humidity levels as they can vary greatly where I live.
When I got the KitchenAid pasta roller attachment (which I absolutely love), given I needed to drag that thing out to my island, I started doing it in the mixer. Two and a half minutes and then a minute or so of hand kneading and it was done. Initially, I really liked being able to add flour or liquid while kneading and almost instantly seeing when the dough was right, but after finding the right proportions, I never needed to adjust regardless of the current humidity.
The dough from the mixer is more elastic, and less affected by other ingredients I might add including spinach, basil, or tomato based purées. It always rolls out perfectly, for thicker lasagna and tortellini, to medium fettuccine, pappardelle, and thinner tagliatelle and ravioli.
Since you have a KA mixer, give my recipe a try and let me/us know what you think.
I’d start by cutting back on the liquid in your recipe so you get a crumbly dough. I have experimented with water levels with my Phillips, and it’s finnicky for sure. I sometimes knead it an extra cycle or two, then rest the dough 30 min, before extruding. You can easily start and stop the Phillips machine.
I’ve had mixed success/failure trying to adapt regular recipes to the machine. My last pappardelle came out more like Spätzle.
