Today I decided to endeavor in making handmade pasta with a rolling pin. I recently purchased the first edition of "The Classic Italian Cookbook" by Marcella Hazan. Inside, there's an excellent description of how one should make handmade pasta. On top of that, there's also a paragraph disparaging the use of a pasta machine - a first!
"[Machine made pasta] is truly effortless, but, unfortunately, machine pasta is not really as fine as the handmade kind. Something happens to its composition as it goes through the steel rollers that gives the dough an ever so slightly slippery texture...these considerations aside, however, machine pasta can be quite good; it is certainly superior to the commercial variety, and it is far better than having no homemade pasta at all."
I decided to try out the technique described in my new cookbook. It uses a rolling pin to continuously stretch, and knead the pasta dough until it's thin enough to handle. Furthermore, the pasta is rolled onto itself onto the rolling pin, thus flattening it even more. The wooden dowel gives the pasta texture.
While reading through chowhound and egullet, I found many remarks of how long it takes to make hand rolled pasta. However, I found that the process was quite simple - at least compared to how I used to make pasta. In the past, I used to roll out the pasta into as thin a sheet as I could (which ultimately was too thick), I'd cut each strand out, dry each strand on any hanging surface I could find, and then stretch out each strand to a desired thickness. Proper hand-rolling is nothing compared to my belaboured multi-hour process.
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| Before unfurling |
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| Post unfurling |
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| Unfurling |
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