Pasta making - flour type.

Efour · 13 Jun 2011 at 00:39

Hi,

Do any of you make your own Pasta??

What i have read it recommends the fine 00 graded stuff.. I don't have any. Will it still come out ok with regular flour? or is the grade that important?

cheers.

Hairybudda · 13 Jun 2011 at 01:39

It kinda depends on what you're doing with your pasta, most of the time well home-made and non-overcooked pasta will be good so long are you're not using generic self raising flour(most plain flour will work). You cooking for foodies?

HeadlessChicken · 13 Jun 2011 at 08:46

I usually have 00 kicking about for pasta and pizza. It is, undoubtedly the best. However, I have used plain white when been caught in the past, which gave reasonable results.

The real kicker is in the cooking

mangobreeder · 13 Jun 2011 at 09:08

it will do fine, but 00 "Tipo" is far superior and you will notice a difference between the two.

Cant you just run down to the supermarket quickly?

Ahleckz · 13 Jun 2011 at 11:17

I've made pasta once, and really didn't see that it was worth the effort. If you get fresh pasta from a supermarket, you're dancing.
Though, I didn't have a pasta roller thing so maybe with one of them it wouldn't be so arduous.

J1234 · 13 Jun 2011 at 11:53

Tipo 00 is best, but plain will work too.

Jolteh · 13 Jun 2011 at 12:53

I'd just get some decent dried pasta.

If it's good enough for the italians, it's good enough for me.

Squid · 13 Jun 2011 at 15:00

Ahleckz said:
I've made pasta once, and really didn't see that it was worth the effort. If you get fresh pasta from a supermarket, you're dancing.
Though, I didn't have a pasta roller thing so maybe with one of them it wouldn't be so arduous.

"fresh pasta" is joke , real pasta is dried ask any Italian

HeadlessChicken · 13 Jun 2011 at 15:06

Squid said:
"fresh pasta" is joke , real pasta is dried ask any Italian

Not at all. Italians will use dried pasta as happily as fresh and vice versa, it's more to do with convenience. All pasta starts "fresh", it just depends if its cooked immediately or stored. The drying of it really doesn't change it much at all.

It's quite hard to get really decent dried pasta for a reasonable price in the UK I've found.

spudbynight · 13 Jun 2011 at 15:31

We normally stick to De Cecco

Burnsy2023 · 13 Jun 2011 at 15:42

Pasta rollers are worth their weight in gold. Rolling it out by hand is very hard work.

alexakasloth · 14 Jun 2011 at 16:59

If you have a food processor you can mix the eggs and flour in there, bring the mix together on a surface then feed through a pasta machine... shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes inc. Cooking time.

Jolteh · 14 Jun 2011 at 17:46

$loth said:
If you have a food processor you can mix the eggs and flour in there, bring the mix together on a surface then feed through a pasta machine... shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes inc. Cooking time.

Then you've gotta clean the food processor and pasta machine on top of normal pan you'd use for pasta alone.

Dried is the way to go.

alexakasloth · 14 Jun 2011 at 20:08

Jolteh said:
Then you've gotta clean the food processor and pasta machine on top of normal pan you'd use for pasta alone.

Dried is the way to go.

For plain pasta shapes yes dried is much more convinient (not that it's hard to clean) but it's a bit tricky to fill, plus the OP was asking about fresh pasta.

Redz · 16 Jun 2011 at 17:56

Burnsy2023 said:
Pasta rollers are worth their weight in gold. Rolling it out by hand is very hard work.

Yep, Imperia machines are, had one for years with no problems.

pspcpog · 17 Jun 2011 at 12:01

I use strong, really strong, bread flour, sometimes without egg. super strong flour
can do without egg but can't beat the flavour of egg.