For their egg pasta, different Italians have different recipes. There's no official way to do this. Here, I am showing two different versions. My default version is based on semola. The alternate version is based on classic 00 flour.
My cousins in Abruzzo use a mixture of “semola di grano duro rimacinata” (remilled durum wheat flour) and “tipo 0 manitoba” (bread flour). See the Flours page for more details on Italian vs. American flours. The semola gives the dough a yellowish color and a firm, substantial, smooth consistency, and is less processed than soft-wheat flours. They use a 70:30 ratio. Note that semolina is a coarser version of semola, despite the name (-ina usually means small), so be sure to get semola.
The alternate version is more common in Italy and is based on classic, lower-protein, 00 flour. See the Flours page for a discussion on the grind (00 is fine) vs. protein content (independent). This 00-based pasta dough is a little lighter and I like to use it for more delicate pastas such as Tortelloni. I suggest you try both for various recipes and see which one goes best.
Of course, this pasta wouldn’t be “all’uovo” without eggs. The rule of thumb in Italy is one egg per 100 grams of flour. I have found that, here in the United States, I need about 1.4 large eggs per 100 grams of flour, which happens to be consistent with what my mother taught me: two eggs per cup of flour. Perhaps Italy has large chickens, I don’t know. What I have learned, though, is that a medium egg in Italy weighs about 60 grams, whereas a large one in the US weighs only about 56 grams. (My suspicion about Italian super-chickens may not be far off.) In any case, especially here in the US, don’t scrimp on eggs: it’s easier to add flour to a sticky dough than to add egg to a stiff dough.
I normally make a quadruple batch of dough (i.e., 2000g total flour) and freeze it in 500-gram vacuum packets so that it can be readily rolled out whenever I need it. This is discussed more below.
This dough is used in many other recipes. Below you fill find various points for returning to those recipes.
DEFAULT version based on semola:
350 g Antico Caputo Semola di Grano Duro Rimacinata (70%)
150 g King Arthur (Organic) Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (30%) (actually, King Arthur Bread Flour would be closer to Manitoba - I will try that sometime)
7 (392 g) large eggs
ALTERNATE version based on 00:
500 g Antico Caputo Doppio Zero 00 (11.5% protein)
7 (392 g) large eggs
1. Weigh the flours using a kitchen scale and stir them together in a large bowl. Obviously, for the 00 version, there's only one flour. Make a well in the middle of the flour.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk. Pour them into the well. You can also beat the eggs in the well and avoid the second bowl.
3. Using your fingers, mix flour from the sides of the well into the beaten egg. When all the egg has been incorporated into flour and you have a sticky dough, start folding the dough, bringing more flour in from the sides of the bowl. (Throughout this step, I like to use one hand for the messy work, and the other for rotating the bowl as I go.)
4. Once the dough is holding together, put it on a base-floured (semola or 00 depending on recipe chosen) surface and continue to knead the dough in a circular fashion: fold over the dough past the halfway point, flatten it down with your palm, and rotate 90 degrees. As you do this, the outside of the dough should get smoother and more circular. Do this for 10 minutes until the dough is reasonably smooth. It’s okay if the dough is slightly sticky; however, if a lot of it is coming off on your hands and counter, your dough needs more flour. To add more, sprinkle a little base flour on your work surface, place the dough on it, and knead it into the dough. If, instead, your dough is too stiff or dry to work with, mix an egg with a little flour to create a small amount of very sticky dough and then knead that into the original dough.
5. Whichever type of pasta you’re making, the dough will be smoother and easier to work with if you let it rest, wrapped in plastic and covered by the bowl, before sending it through the pasta machine. For fettuccine and other “long pastas,” this step is helpful but optional—if you’re short on time, skip it. For making ravioli, however, this covered resting period is necessary. I allot two hours, kneading the dough every half hour, but there’s nothing wrong with letting it rest even longer if it doesn’t dry out.
6. If you plan to freeze the dough at this point (what I usually do), you can STOP HERE and do the following:
a. Divide it into 500-gram (1.1 lb) shaped disks, coat with a small amount of base flour, wrap each in parchment paper, then wrap that in plastic wrap or, better yet, use a vacuum sealer.
b. When ready to use, let dough thaw on the counter.
c. It takes me only 10 minutes to roll out one of the thawed disks – I can do that while taking a break from my day job.
7. If you are rolling out the dough using a long rolling pin, STOP HERE and return to the Pasta al Mattarello recipe.
8. If you are making bigoli (extruded fat spaghetti), STOP HERE and return to the Bigoli recipe.
9. At this point in the recipe, you are committed to using your pasta machine to roll out the dough to the appropriate thickness for cutting.
10. If you made a full dough, in your base-floured work surface, cut the dough into halves. Wrap one half in plastic wrap to prevent its drying out and set aside until you have completed making whichever pasta type with the unwrapped half. Divide the unwrapped half into eighths. If you are rolling out a thawed 500-gram (1.1 lb) disk, then divide it into fourths.
11. For each smaller piece of dough:
a. Coat in base flour and then flatten with a rolling pin.
b. Feed through your pasta maker at setting #1 (thickest setting). Fold it over on itself, flour if necessary, and then, with the straight edge leading, feed through the pasta maker again . (Keep in mind that for ravioli dough you’d like the ends to be square to make the best use of it.)
c. Continue the steps of folding the dough over, flouring the outside as necessary, and feeding the dough through gradually higher (thinner) machine settings until it’s the desired thickness, about 1 millimeter for ravioli and one notch thicker for long pastas. The exact numbers of the settings will depend on the machine. For this last roll-out, when making ravioli, it’s important that you sprinkle a generous amount of base flour on your work surface BEFORE rolling it out, otherwise it will stick badly and ruin your day. Conversely, you do not want to add extra base flour on top of the rolled-out dough when making ravioli.
12. If you are making ravioli, STOP HERE and return to the Ravioli recipe.
13. If you are using the pasta chitarra (guitar) to cut the pasta, STOP HERE and return to the Pasta alla Chitarra recipe.
14. If you are using a knife to cut the pasta by hand, STOP HERE and return to the Pasta Tagliata a Mano recipe.
15. At this point in the recipe, you are committed to using your pasta machine to cut the pasta. I find that my machine’s spaghettini cutter makes it come out too small (plus we prefer bigoli), so I only use the fettucine cutter in my particular machine.
16. Flour each piece well on both sides and put it through the pasta machine’s fettuccine or spaghettini cutter. I used to cut the strands to 8-10 inches as they were extruded; then I would place them, loosely curled, on a base-floured surface (or tray if planning to freeze). Now I prefer to drape the uncut strands on a pasta drying rack, spread out well across the rack. Either method works. If you use the tray, however, avoid stacking layers of pasta on each other. Above all, avoid any scenario where the strands can stick together in little balls as it will be very difficult to separate them later. If you don’t plan to freeze the pasta, you can keep it in the fridge or on the drying rack until ready to cook the same day (fridge is fine for the next day). Once frozen, you may transfer the pasta to gallon-sized plastic storage bags.
