Lasagna – basic recipe with variations

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 200 g wheat flour type 405 or 550, or Italian type 00
• 50 g durum wheat semolina
• 1 egg(s)
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 pinch of salt
• 250 ml milk
• 1 onion(s), white
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 cloves
• 25 g butter
• 25 g wheat flour type 405
• Salt and pepper, white
• 1 pinch(s) nutmeg, freshly grated
• 8 tbsp Parmesan, freshly grated
• 4 cup(s) sauce (meat) or tomato concassée according to my recipes, see recipe description

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Rest time approx. 45 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Total time approx. 3 hours 15 minutes

For a classic lasagna, you’ll find a dish very similar to “alla Bolognese” under Tagliatelle al Ragù in my database, which should be prepared first. Or you can use the Ragù alla Bolognese from this recipe: https://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/4357121737987798/Tagliatelle-al-Ragu-alla-Bolognese.html I make the béchamel sauce, called besciamella in Italian, like this: Stud the onion with the cloves and bring it to a boil in the milk with the bay leaf. Reduce the heat slightly and let it simmer for 20 minutes, just below boiling point. Remove the onion, the skin that has formed on the milk, and the bay leaf. Heat the butter in a saucepan and whisk in the flour. Pour in the milk and continue stirring well to prevent lumps from forming. Then simmer everything for 15 minutes until it thickens slightly and finally pass it through a sieve. Cover with cling film until ready to use to prevent a skin from forming. It is a good idea to make the béchamel sauce after the pasta sheets are ready. Pasta sheets: Mix all the ingredients for the dough and knead thoroughly. Let it rest in a cool place on greaseproof paper for at least 45 minutes. Then, in batches, pull the dough through the pasta machine several times, using increasingly finer settings, or roll it out thinly by hand. Cut it into rectangles as desired, e.g. 15 x 8 cm. You will need 16 or 24 sheets for 4 people, depending on how many layers you want for the lasagna. Blanch the lasagna sheets in salted water for about 2 minutes, placing no more than 3-4 sheets in a large pot at a time to prevent them from sticking together. Lift them out with a ladle and immediately rinse off any starch thoroughly with cold water. Place them next to each other on a cotton towel to dry. Thinly fill a suitable baking dish with some ragù, place a layer of lasagna on top so that four sheets are positioned side by side. Spread a thin layer of béchamel sauce on each sheet. Place another sheet of pasta on top and cover with ragù, ensuring that none of the pasta spills over the sides. The ragù should therefore be quite thick in consistency. Repeat this process one or two more times, finishing with ragù. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and bake at 180°C for 25 minutes. Make sure the pasta dish is fairly dry, so that nothing collapses or tips over on the plate later – a nightmare for the original. A lasagna should sit like a piece of cake on the plate and not be drowning in sauce. As with all my pasta dishes, the quantities given here are based on a primo piatto. Even with the small amount of dough, you can easily make 24 sheets according to the size described above. Variations: You can place other sauces, ragùs, or mixtures between the sheets of pasta. Many meat or fish ragùs with a somewhat firmer consistency are suitable, as are vegetarian tomato sauces such as concassée. Instead of béchamel, you can use ricotta, spinach, duxelles, mushroom stuffing, and others. A good example can be found in my recipe “Salmon Lasagna à la Winkler” in the database. You can also find variations of ragù Bolognese in my recipes, such as pappardelle al cinghiale or rabbit ragù. A lasagna recipe with oxtail ragù and mashed potatoes is described separately.