There are hundreds likely thousands of different varieties of what is considered pasta, from spaghetti to fettuccine and tagliatelli to conchiglie. We often consider pasta to be Italian. The country produces more pasta than any other globally, and most of the dishes we eat that require pasta are of Italian origin.
It's true that Italians popularized pasta and helped to spread pasta all over the globe, but it's also thought that pasta's origins can be traced back either to the Arab world or, as legend has it, to the adventures of legendary Italian explorer Marco Polo in Asia he may or may not have brought pasta back to Italy in the form of noodles! With unclear origins and unclear definitions, it's surprisingly hard actually to define what pasta is.
Despite this, if we see pasta in the supermarket or start eating pasta dishes, we are always certain we know what we are eating. Whether it's penne, fusilli, or macaroni, we know this is pasta. Why do we know that this is pasta? Well, the way to answer that is to look at what makes up the pasta. Pasta needs as little as two ingredients to be prepared. All you really need are flour and some form of liquid.
This is what constitutes the bulk of the dried pasta that we regularly purchase from the store. Pasta flour and liquid whether it's water, eggs, or oil are used to form a dough that is then rolled out and cut into the many hundreds of different pasta shapes that you can find across the world.
Pasta flour, then, is obviously the key ingredient. But it doesn't have to be the only ingredient either. Different recipes will call for eggs to make your pasta dough, or for different types of oil, or a dash of salt. Different regions especially in Italy have their own unique pasta recipes, preparing extravagant shapes or using peculiar ingredients. Traditionally, Italian pasta would always be made fresh, using eggs. This is what gives Italian pasta that distinctive taste, texture, and color.
Traditionally, Italian pasta is only produced from durum wheat flour to create what we also know as semolina pasta. The most important element of pasta is that shape. We need our pasta to be able to hold its shape and integrity when it's boiled in water to cook it. To do that, we need a high gluten content. Gluten gives our pasta the strong bonds it needs to survive the boiling process, not breaking down into a horrible mush, but holding that pasta shape like a hero.
Are you still confused as to what counts as pasta, though? Aren't noodles also made from flour and eggs? Yes, they are, and the differences are very subtle in many ways. Spaghetti isn't that dissimilar to the noodles you'd select for a stir fry or ramen! It's almost easier to look at what doesn't counts if we want to understand what does.
While pasta flour isn't limited to semolina you can prepare pasta dough from all-purpose flour, wholewheat flour, and even almond flour , it is limited in scope compared to noodles, which will often use rice flour as a base, rather than wheat. There's also a difference in egg content. To be classified officially as noodles, a product requires a certain percentage of its ingredients to be eggs.
For pasta, while traditional recipes call for egg, there's no requirement for this to be in the recipe. As we already mentioned, you can prepare your pasta dough using flour and water, or flour and oil. An important note is that pasta is unleavened; no raising products go into the pasta recipe like you would have if you were using the same wheat flour to prepare bread.
Making at-home pasta has never been more popular. Plus, with experienced chefs and influencers churning out quick and delicious recipes left and right, finding inspiration and guidance has never been easier, too. But while viral cooking videos are great for figuring out how to cook a recipe, the hosts don't always give away all their secrets.
One of the most important being — how do you know which ingredients to use exactly? This is especially true when it comes to the type of flour you should use for homemade pasta.
There are so many options to choose from, but one in particular is recommended again and again. At this point, I knew there was no point in adding water—if I wanted additional moisture, egg whites were definitely a better bet. It seemed clear that my dough was going to require a combination of whole eggs and additional yolks.
I ultimately settled on three yolks for every egg white. What's that? You like softer, mushier noodles? Good for you. Add a teaspoon of oil to my basic recipe. Want a richer, eggier flavor and a more golden hue? Throw in an extra yolk and add a little more flour. This is your dough. To figure out exactly how much flour to use with my eggs—to find my ideal hydration level, technically speaking—I made five batches of dough.
Using the same ratio of yolk and egg white for each, I began with four ounces of flour and, moving in half-ounce increments, added flour to each batch until I could no longer get the dough to come together. After I'd kneaded these doughs for 10 minutes each, they looked like this:.
Once I'd let them rest for 30 minutes more on resting times shortly! The wettest dough and the driest dough were completely unworkable. They simply wouldn't pass through the roller—one was incredibly sticky, while the other crumbled into dry clumps. Sometimes, a longer resting time can help a dough hydrate more, and it is possible that the driest of these could be rehabilitated with additional time. We'll get to the pros and cons of long rests in a bit. Ultimately, the sweet spot that I, and my blind-tasters, settled on was one whole egg 1.
The dough represented by the pasta strands on the left was so wet that the noodles stuck together; the one on the right was dense and almost stiff. The middle pasta, our unanimous winner, was made with a dough that was relatively easy to mix and knead, but not so wet that the pasta stuck to the roller or itself.
It tasted good, looked good, and had that signature delicate, satiny texture. To Salt or Not to Salt? My dough was almost perfect. The only other thing I wanted to test was whether I'd get even better flavor by adding salt directly to the dough, instead of just my cooking water or sauce. The simple answer is yes.
Do it! Salting pasta water is still well and good, but there's no compelling reason not to salt your dough. I tried both fine-grained iodized salt and slightly coarser kosher salt, and both work; I prefer the flavor of kosher salt.
Just don't use a coarse sea salt, which will keep your dough from developing a silky-smooth texture. Hypothetically, you could salt your pasta even more and skip salting your pasta water, but I choose to make a dough that still tastes good after cooking in salted water, since it gives me a little more flexibility in the flavor of the final product—I can make and freeze batches of dough and then decide on a case-by-case basis how salty I want my pasta to be.
At this point, we're working with 10 ounces of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and two whole eggs, plus four additional yolks. This will make four to six servings and can be halved or doubled as desired.
If you have a good food processor, you can go ahead and toss all your ingredients in and let it run until it forms a big ball.
Let it keep whipping around in there, or take it out and knead it with your hands. You can get to a similar point with a stand mixer, using your dough hook attachment. But I gotta admit: I love making pasta by hand. It's a little more work, but it's satisfying, fun work. It also gives you a lot more control. I'm going to let you in on a little secret: When I'm making pasta at home, I don't measure my flour. Sure, I'll weigh out a rough amount, but when you're working with flour and eggs, there are a lot of variables that you simply can't control.
Your eggs might be slightly bigger or smaller; it might be an especially humid or dry day. All of these things will affect how much flour you'll need. Mixing by hand guarantees that you can adjust your dough as you're working, ultimately allowing you to develop your ideal texture with greater precision. Here's how to do it. Step 1: Make a Well. Weigh out your flour and pour it onto your surface in a pile. Then, with your fingers, make a hole in the center.
You'll want it to be relatively wide—at least four inches—to accommodate all those eggs. Now add your eggs to the center. These photos show the old-school technique, in which you actually whisk the eggs once they're on the countertop, but there's no reason you can't whisk them ahead of time.
Step 2: Mix. Using a fork or your fingertips, gradually start pushing the flour into the pool of egg. Keep adding flour until it no longer makes sense to use the fork—the dough will be wet and sticky, but will hold together as a single mass.
Step 3: Knead. At this point, take out your bench scraper and scrape off any dough sticking to your fork or your hands. Once the dough feels firm and dry and can form a craggy-looking ball, it's time to start kneading. I'm not gonna lie: Kneading is a pain in the butt.
It's a lot of work, but you'll want to be firm and persistent. An under-kneaded pasta won't have the same kind of snappy spring as a properly worked dough, and you may even wind up with bubbles or bits of unincorporated flour.
It's almost impossible to over-knead a dough, though, since it'll eventually build up so much elasticity that it won't allow you to continue. That said, you don't want to keep the dough out for too long, lest it begin to dry out. Around 10 minutes of kneading will allow you to get a smooth ball of dough without having to worry about drying. To knead, simply press the heel of your hand into the ball of dough, pushing forward and down. You'll want to keep going until the dough no longer looks powdery—it should have a smooth, elastic texture, similar to a firm ball of Play-Doh.
If your dough feels wet and tacky, add more flour as necessary. If it feels too dry, don't add water unless it literally cannot hold together. This is what "too dry" looks like:. If, as with the dough above, incorporating water seems really necessary, I recommend using a spray bottle, which will allow you to add very small amounts of water to a large surface area of dough.
If your dough looks wetter than the photo above, it's probably fine. Just keep kneading. Once you have your ball of kneaded dough, wrap it tightly in plastic, and either jump down to the resting section below or follow our instructions for Refrigerating or Freezing Fresh Pasta Dough.
If your plan is to make your fresh pasta in advance and come back to it later, this is where you can pause your work. Once the dough is wrapped in plastic, stick it in the fridge, but be forewarned that it will gradually acquire a grayish tinge—which won't affect flavor or texture, but does make for a disappointing presentation. To give it more time, tuck the wrapped ball into a zipper-lock bag, removing as much air as possible, and freeze it for up to three weeks.
When you're ready, thaw it in the refrigerator until it's soft and pliant to the touch. It's time to talk resting. Now that you've built up that gluten network, you have a dough that's incredibly elastic and springy. The resting period allows the flour to continue to hydrate, and the gluten network to relax. Most experts will tell you that if you tried to roll out your dough at this point, disaster would ensue—your dough would be too dry and too elastic to roll out.
If we were working with rolling pins only, that would probably be true—the dough would just keep snapping back.
But we're in the 21st century, and it's a little more complicated than that. Here are six doughs. The one all the way on the right wasn't rested at all. The one on the left rested for six hours. In between them are doughs that rested for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, and three hours.
I rolled the six-hour and the no-rest doughs once, through the widest setting on my pasta roller, to see what would happen. You can see that the unrested dough, up top, is freaking out. It's all rough and jagged, because the rolling has essentially snapped those little gluten bonds in half.
But as I continued to roll it through increasingly thinner settings, it took on a much smoother texture. By the end, there was very little visual difference between the two. Ultimately, I rolled out and cooked all six doughs. Was there a difference between them? The dough that hadn't rested at all was a little harder and firmer, a little more rubbery.
The doughs that had rested for an hour or longer were almost identical. It's sort of like the difference between food processor pesto and pesto made with a mortar and pestle. The former isn't bad , but the latter is definitely superior.
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