Homemade pasta

I'm reading the book "Ratio" by Michael Ruhlman, and I LOVE it. I'm not sure where I first heard about it, but I bought it with a Christmas gift card from my cousin and her husband, and it's been sitting on my shelf. I finally pulled it out to "read" it.

I say "read" because it's somewhat of a cookbook in book form. The 230-page hardcover book is split into chapters and has paragraphs, but it's interspersed with recipes and, most importantly, ratios. The premise is that all baking and cooking starts with a basic ratio. Then those ratios are tweaked to achieve a variety of dishes. For example, the ratio of pasta dough is 3 parts flour to 2 parts egg. Adding spinach, you can make green pasta. Adding extra egg yolks, you can create rich egg yolk pasta.

So, I tried the basic pasta tonight. I had assumed I couldn't make homemade pasta since I didn't have a pasta maker (that you use to flatten and cut the dough). But Ruhlman really breaks things down so that even without fancy equipment you can make these things. So, as he pointed out, I could just roll the dough into a thin sheet and cut it however I pleased (which is what I did).

The dough-making was very easy. The rolling and cutting was the most time-consuming part, but even that was fairly simple and quick. The dough was a little thicker than it would have been if I had a pasta maker (or had taken the time to roll it a little thinner), but it worked fine. I rolled it into sheets, cut it into rectangles with a pizza cutter and pinched the middles to make bowtie pasta.

Sadly, I was more concerned with the pasta than the sauce, so I didn't plan ahead and had to use sauce from a jar. But next time, I plan to find a cream sauce recipe, which I think would be excellent with it.

I'm really excited about the possibility of making homemade ravioli or tortellini, just as soon as I find out the best way to produce meat filling. (Yes, cheese is also a possibility, but I usually prefer meat inside my pasta.)

The basic recipe in the book uses 9 oz. (or about 1 1/2 cups) flour and 6 ounces (or about 3 large) eggs. That's it!

Rather than typing out the rest of the directions, I suggest you buy the book yourself. Or, you can check out this similar process I found online. (I used regular all-purpose flour, even though this online recipe suggests bread or Italian flour.)

Expect to see more references to this book in the future. I'm a huge fan! (It is also helping me understand a bit more about how ingredients work together in baking, especially when it comes to yeast, flour, gluten, etc.)