How to Make Fresh Pasta

I love making fresh pasta at home! It’s so much easier than I thought. Trey got me the KitchenAid pasta attachments for my birthday last month, and I have been playing around with them ever since. I really wanted to learn to make fresh pasta this year. 

It’s been on my mind for a while, but I always felt a little intimidated to get started. I figured it would be sort of hard and that my first few batches would probably be flops. So I prepared myself for that mentally.

Related: Use your fresh pasta to make this pesto pasta recipe. Simple and delicious!

But it turns out that making pasta from scratch isn’t all that difficult. I was surprised that my first attempt turned out really good, and it was delicious!

That was actually the first time I had ever eaten fresh pasta too. Double win that night. 🙂 I learned how to make pasta from the book Martha Stewart’s Cooking School.

The book has a great step-by-step guide to making pasta dough. Honestly it’s a really wonderful book for anyone looking to develop all sorts of basic kitchen skills. I’m a fan.

After I started to feel comfortable with the process I started making up my own little variations. I really wanted to add flavors to my pasta doughs (and color!).

Homemade Pasta Ingredients:

For regular pasta dough, I mix up 2 cups flour, 2 large eggs and a teaspoon of olive oil.

For beet pasta, I used 2 cups flour, 1 large egg, 1 teaspoon olive oil and 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh beet juice. For spinach pasta I used 2 cups flour, 1 large egg 1 teaspoon olive oil and 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh spinach juice.

Elsie let me borrow her juicer so I could make my vegetable juices, but you could also buy vegetable juice. I like to mix my dough in a bowl until it’s a crumbly mess. Then I turn the dough out onto a floured counter and knead together for 4-6 minutes.

Then you let the dough rest for 20 to 30 minutes (be sure to cover it so it doesn’t dry out too much). I have also made dough the night before, put it in a ziplock bag and store it in the refrigerator overnight.

This works great but be sure to allow the chilled dough to sit out on the counter for 45 minutes to an hour before working with it again so it can warm up a bit. Cold dough doesn’t stretch well, just like cold muscles. (Yeah, I know about that.)

How to Make Fresh Pasta:

Divide each dough ball into two pieces and roll out into an oval. Feed the dough through the pasta roller set at 1. You can also roll pasta dough out by hand using a rolling pin.

Once you feed the dough through once fold it (as pictured above). Now feed it through the pasta roller set at 1 again (or roll by hand again). 

Feed the dough through the pasta roller at each level (1, 2, 3…) until you get to 5. I stopped at 5, because I was making fettuccine. If you are making a thinner pasta, like ravioli, you may need to go a few more steps. Check your manual if you are a newbie like me.

Once you have your long thin giant pasta noodle you are ready to change your attachment. I put on the fettuccine attachment. You can also cut pasta by hand using a pizza cutter. Feed the dough through the cutter and catch it as your fresh pasta comes out the other side.

Drape your finished pasta on a drying rack. I like to go through all the steps with one pasta dough ball, keeping the other covered, so it doesn’t dry out while I work.

Once your pasta has been on the drying rack for few minutes it will begin to dry out. You can cook it or roll it into little pasta nests to save for later in the day. I bet you want to see my ultra fancy pasta drying rack, huh?

Gotcha! I don’t have a fancy drying rack. I needed one in a pinch, I realized, so I use a cheap wooden clothes drying rack. Sort of funny I guess but it works well for me, and I can just fold it up and store it away when I’m not making pasta. So I think I’ll just keep at it. 

How to Cook Fresh Pasta:

You cook fresh pasta the same way you do store bought dry pasta expect that it takes slightly less time. I cooked this fettuccine in boiling salted water for 6-7 minutes and it was ready to serve.

The best is to just taste and see if your pasta is done. What’s fun about these pastas is that the dough is really colorful and contains very concentrated vegetable juices, but they don’t have an overt vegetable taste.

They are delicious, and I am pretty sure they could still pass a picky eaters taste test. Unless the picky eater hates colors. Poor color-hating picky eater.

Thanks for letting me share my current kitchen obsession with you. xo. Emma

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5 from 11 votes

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Yield 4

Prep 30 minutes mins

Cook 6 minutes mins

Total 36 minutes mins

Ingredients

1x2x3x

• ▢ 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ▢ 2 eggs
• ▢ 1 teaspoon olive oil

Instructions

• In a large mixing bowl gently stir together the flour, eggs, and olive oil until a dough ball forms.
• Let the dough rest for 20 to 30 minutes (be sure to cover it so it doesn’t dry out too much). You can also cover or place in a ziplock bag and refrigerate overnight.
• Divide each dough ball into two pieces and roll out into an oval.
• Feed the dough through the pasta roller set at 1. You can also roll pasta dough out by hand using a rolling pin.
• Once you feed the dough through once fold it. Now feed it through the pasta roller set at 1 again (or roll by hand again). 
• Feed the dough through the pasta roller at each level (1, 2, 3…) until you get to 5. I stopped at 5, because I was making fettuccine. If you are making a thinner pasta, like ravioli, you may need to go a few more steps.
• Once you have your long thin giant pasta noodle you are ready to change your attachment. I put on the fettuccine attachment. You can also cut pasta by hand using a pizza cutter. Feed the dough through the cutter and catch it as your fresh pasta comes out the other side.
• Drape your finished pasta on a drying rack. I like to go through all the steps with one pasta dough ball, keeping the other covered, so it doesn’t dry out while I work.

Notes

You cook fresh pasta the same way you do store bought dry pasta expect that it takes slightly less time. I cooked this fettuccine in boiling salted water for 6-7 minutes and it was ready to serve.

© Author Emma Chapman

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Keywords pasta

Nutrition

Nutrition Facts

How to Make Fresh Pasta

Amount per Serving

Calories

268

% Daily Value*

Fat

 

4

g

6

%

Saturated Fat

 

1

g

6

%

Trans Fat

 

0.01

g

Polyunsaturated Fat

 

1

g

Monounsaturated Fat

 

2

g

Cholesterol

 

82

mg

27

%

Sodium

 

33

mg

1

%

Potassium

 

97

mg

3

%

Carbohydrates

 

48

g

16

%

Fiber

 

2

g

8

%

Sugar

 

0.3

g

0

%

Protein

 

9

g

18

%

Vitamin A

 

119

IU

2

%

Calcium

 

22

mg

2

%

Iron

 

3

mg

17

%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Notice: Nutrition is auto-calculated, using Spoonacular, for your convenience. Where relevant, we recommend using your own nutrition calculations.