I used to mix my pasta in a bowl because it was easier, then I took a class at the famous Vecchia Scuola Bolognese (VSB) and discovered a completely different way of mixing the dough to make it more airy and smoother faster. They make a very wide well in the middle, as described below. I had seen the "well" technique many times, but always avoided it because it made a huge mess. The wide well keeps the egg from escaping. All that said, mixing pasta in a bowl works perfectly fine; you'll likely just need a little more egg for some reason. I now use the technique from the Bolognese masters (Alessandra and Stefania Spisni) because it's more fun, dirties one fewer bowl, and takes less time to arrive at a smooth dough that is ready to be rolled out.
Different Italians have different recipes, even Italians from the same region. There's no official way to do this. I am showing two different versions of egg pasta. Our pasta masters in Bologna use exclusively soft wheat flour and don't care whether it's 00 or 0 or exactly what level of protein it has. Throughout Italy, the typical recipe calls for 00 flour of medium protein content and one egg per 100 g of that flour. Note that an average Italian egg is about the same size as a large egg in the USA, perhaps slightly larger.
In contrast, 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 of the two flours. Note that semolina is a coarser version of semola, despite the name (-ina usually means small in Italian), so be sure to get semola. I add a little more egg to this recipe because the semola seems to soak up the moisture more than whole wheat flour.
I prefer the semola version for most things so it is my default. For more delicate pastas such as tortellini or tortelloni, I believe the traditional version works better by bringing out the filling more. However, I believe my ravioli tastes better with the semola version. I suggest you experiment with both and see which you prefer in which recipe. You can't really go wrong with either.
Finally, notice that, for 300 g of flour, you need about 3 eggs and each egg weighs roughly 55 g, so that's around 465 g of dough. One pound is 454 g, so 300 g flour + 3 eggs makes about a pound of pasta. That's a good number to keep in mind. Also, for a filled pasta, the amount of filling needed is about the same weight as the dough, so one pound of dough will make two pounds of ravioli, for example.
I often make a quadruple batch of dough (i.e., 2000 g total flour) and freeze it in 500-gram (1.1 lb) vacuum-sealed packets so that it can be readily rolled out whenever I need it. The masters in Bologna would never approve of this, but I have never noticed that the freezing changes the flavor or consistency.
This egg pasta 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)
6 (336 g) large eggs (one extra egg than for second version because the semola soaks up the moisture more)
ALTERNATE version based on 00 (better for delicate pastas such as tortellini, tortelloni):
500 g Antico Caputo Pasta Fresca e Gnocchi 00 (12.25% protein) or Antico Caputo Doppio Zero 00 (11.5% protein)
5 (280 g) large eggs (this is traditional: one egg per 100 g of 00 flour)
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.
2. Dump the flour onto the counter and make a very wide well in the middle (see photo below). This is key to preventing the eggs from getting away from you and making a huge mess.
3. Crack the eggs right into the middle of the well. It helps slightly if they are already at room temperature, but it's not absolutely required.
4. Using a fork, scramble the eggs, with the goal of getting some air into the eggs. So lift your fork up in the air a little as you go.
5. Now start pulling in flour from the sides, a little at a time. Continue to use the fork to mix and to add air to the mixture.
6. At some point, it will get too viscous and you'll need to start using your hands. Gently pull in more flour. Do not worry at all about getting it all together at this point. In fact - and I thought this was really weird at first - keep the dough in many shards as you try to mix in more of the flour (see below). This will allow more air into the dough. Again, always mix very gently.
7. Once you get as much of the flour mixed in and you have shards all over the place, you may want to grab a scraper and scrape under the dough to get anything stuck to the counter back into the mix.
8. Now, begin gently kneading the dough (see photo below). Roll it back and forth gently. We don't want to push all the air out, or at least that's what the Bolognese ladies say.
9. As you roll it it will form a big log. Rotate 90 degrees, fold it over from top to bottom, and do the same gentle rolling to re-form the log.
10. Continue this gentle kneading for 10-15 minutes with the 90-degree rotates. You can't really over-knead it.
11. If you plan to freeze the dough at this point (what I often do), you can STOP HERE and do the following:
a. Divide it into 500-gram (1.1 lb) shaped balls, coat throroughly in the base flour (bathe the dough in it), wrap each in parchment paper, then wrap that in plastic wrap or, better yet, use a vacuum sealer. The parchment paper will stick less and avoid microplastics getting into the dough.
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 doughs – I can do that while taking a break from my daily activities.
d. Do not tell the pasta masters in Bologna that we have frozen the dough!
12. Otherwise, wrap the dough well in plastic wrap and let it sit at least 15 minutes before rolling it out. You can add a little base flour to keep it from sticking to the plastic. You can let it rest even longer, like even 2 hours. It will only get smoother while it rests.
13. If you are rolling out the dough using a pasta machine, STOP HERE and return to the Pasta a Macchina recipe.
14. If you are rolling out the dough using a long rolling pin, STOP HERE and return to the Pasta al Mattarello recipe.
15. If you are making bigoli (extruded fat spaghetti), STOP HERE and return to the Bigoli recipe.
First we make a very wide well so there's no chance the eggs will escape when we break them into the well. In this particular set of photos, we are making the traditional recipe using 00 flour:
Here we have 500 g of 00 flour, so 5 large eggs (traditional recipe):
First scramble just the eggs and think about getting air into them with your motion, so be lifting your fork as you do this:
Slowly bring in flour from the edges and mix with the fork until it gets too thick:
Here we're at the point where it got too think, so we grab all the flour and put it on top, in preparation for gentle, disorganized mixing with our hands:
After some disorganized gentle mixing, we have most of the flour incorporated into many unconnected shards. During this, I used the scraper to pull the stuck flour off the surface under the dough. Again, the goal is to keep adding air, which is why we keep this in many shards for now:
Now we're starting to gently pull the shards together into one dough, and we've gotten even more of the remaining flour incorporated:
After gently rocking it back and forth for our first kneading. It naturally starts forming a log left-to-right. After this, we'll rotate it left 90 degrees, fold it over from top to bottom, push down, and do another gentle kneading back and forth to re-create the log, and so forth:
After 10-15 minutes of kneading like that, we will end up with a pretty smooth dough. In this example, I was not freezing it, so we wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes (or even hours) to get smoother. You can add a little base flour to keep it from sticking.
