Homemade Whole Wheat Pasta

Fresh pasta is a feature of high end Italian restaurants – and with good reason its flavour and texture blows away the dried competition.  Underlying that foundation to a great meal though is the reality that making pasta at home is easy, quick and fun.

You’ll need a pasta machine – here we’re making rolled pasta not the extruded sort (that’s for another day).  These are low cost, I picked up one recently for the cottage on special for $20 and generally come with the main rolls whose gap can be adjusted as well as spaghetti and linguine making rolls.

To use whole wheat flour – I grind mine in the homestead mill for the freshest flavour – you’ll need to increase the hydration compared to using most commercial flours – so this recipe adds an additional egg to the dough.  While you can do the kneeing by hand a stand mixer makes life very easy and I would find it hard to go back to living without one in my kitchen.

The other thing to bear in mind is that while the overall process doesn’t take much time from you (particularly if you have a stand mixer) it can’t be rushed.  For the dough to be rolled out easily it needs to be left for a couple of hours in the fridge.  So make the dough in advance and toss it in a ziplock in the fridge – for a few hours or a couple of days.

When you are ready for your fresh spagetti or linguini put your salted water on the stove to boil and generally I find that by the time the pot is boiling – under ten minutes for me – the pasta is ready to be dropped in.

Cooking time for fresh pasta is significantly less than for the dry version so keep that in mind when timing the other components of your meal.