Make Pasta Yourself: This is How Pasta at Its Finest

Pasta dishes are one of our favorite dishes and can be prepared in many different ways. Try making the pasta dough yourself. We have recipes, tips, and instructions!

How do you make noodles?

Open the bag with penne, tagliatelle, macaroni & Co., cook, done: Noodles are incredibly practical and ready quickly. So why bother making the pasta dough yourself? Quite simply, you will be rewarded with a wonderful taste experience. If you make pasta yourself, there will be fresh pasta on the plate, which you can refine and vary according to your taste. This brings variety to the uniform flavor of durum wheat noodles and can be really fun. With a pasta machine, you can get the shape of the delicious pasta nice and even, but you can also make the pasta dough yourself without a machine – a rolling pin is enough. As for the ingredients, the basic pasta recipe is very simple: flour, eggs, water and salt are all you need to make delicious pasta.

Recipes with pasta in many variants

Of course you can vary the ingredients and, for example, make your own pasta dough without eggs – if you don’t have any at home or are vegan. Some pasta doughs come naturally without eggs, such as those for pasta based on durum wheat semolina. Penne, rigatoni, fusilli, spaghetti – these varieties typically belong to the “pasta secca” (dry dough). In Italy, this means the industrially produced pasta. This dry pasta is contrasted with the “pasta fresca all’uovo”. Our recipe for homemade tagliatelle belongs to this fresh egg pasta category. Wide, long pasta, as well as tortellini, ravioli, and other filled varieties can generally be made very easily with egg batter.

Making pasta with the right flour

Whether vegan pasta dough or egg spaetzle: the question often arises as to which flour is best suited for the pasta dough. Durum wheat flour, as used for fresh pasta in Italy, is not always available in this country. Alternatively, you can use fine durum wheat semolina, double-grain flour, wheat flour type 405 or 550 or, for whole-grain pasta, whole-grain flour to make your own pasta dough. If making pasta is already part of your everyday cooking, you might want to produce for stock. Wrapped in cling film, fresh pasta dough will keep in the fridge for a good 24 hours. You can also let the formed pasta air-dry for about two days and store it in jars or cans that can be closed properly. It can be kept for up to three months. The only thing you should not freeze is homemade pasta dough.